


51

by slorpstoes



Category: black white green or blue show off your natural hue flamduicuhncbf
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-04-30 16:57:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 40,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14501472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slorpstoes/pseuds/slorpstoes
Summary: this isn't a fanfic i'm just here for the epub function  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯





	1. Evan Iston

Evan’s never been diagnosed with anything, as far as he’s concerned—well, anything like, uh, “crazy.” There’s “anxious” and “an overall loser,” but those kinds of things don’t usually make you hallucinate three people stuck in your head. (He’s Googled, “I think I might be crazy,” and that led to an hour on Quora.)

And the actual crazy thing? It’s not like he even thinks they’re real. It’s not like he lives his life thinking that Evan Iston, a goddamn loser, happens to have a squad of three. He _knows_ they’re not real, because they’re sat in his room every morning and his mum never says anything about it so they’ve either been breaking and entering every day for the last six years of his life—or they’re not real.

The next question down the line is, “How did it all happen, Mr. Iston?” and that’s a good one, because, well, he can’t really remember, like, at all. The story goes: someday, sometime in the spring—or maybe it was the summer—three kids started following him around, all claiming they were his best friend, and it was cool—god, it was _amazing_ —until he realised that no one else could see them. And Evan just decided to accept it. He can’t remember a time without them, really. He can’t remember just having his head to himself.

They’re not that bad, not really, not once you get past the whole, “hey, I might be losing my mind” thing. It’s nice, actually, in its own super sad, loser-ish way. It’s nice to pretend he’s got friends, or siblings, or, like, anyone who’s not over twenty and not his parents.

(Evan _does_ have friends—uh, friend—but imaginary people are most definitely easier to talk to than real people. Real people, real consequences. Real anxiety. All that jazz. He’s had more conversations with the gremlins in his head than he’s had with real people.)

 There’s three of them—probably, hopefully. They’ve all got his voice, with each their own nuances, so he’s learnt to tell them apart. Like, take James, who sounds like he’s been set on a permanent exuberance high. Like a truck of candy floss—sweet and sticky and Evan didn’t really think about the analogy before he made it.

Family is what he would compare them to. The perfect mix of supportive and just down right annoying. They give him headaches—real headaches: like, imagine three people each telling you the different ways to pick up a sandwich and that you’re doing all of them wrong—but they’re not that bad all the time.

That’s not even his biggest secret, anyway.

 

It’s Tuesday morning, and Evan is currently sitting on his bed—cold, sweaty, anxious, like an old emo rock song—and the world is ending. It’s crashing and crumbling to pieces around him in the form of middle school, the beginning of the end, and it’s almost amazing just how little he can breathe right now. His lungs pinch in a few, then let a tide out, and it makes for a very uneven, fatal experience. It’s so, so hard to breathe.

It could’ve been any day today, and it just happens to be _Tuesday_. He balls his hands into tiny fists, and squeezes them tighter and tighter, willing it to suddenly become a Wednesday, or a No Day, or a Monday three weeks ago. Back when he was on the beach, crying about the sharks, and not on his bed, crying about the first day of school. (He’s not quite crying, yet, but with his luck? Dam’s going to break real soon.)

Evan’s eyes slide to the left, and they slide to the right, and they slide to the mirror, and— _ouch,_ they retreat, because he is a _sight_. He’s got a huge mirror and a maybe not-so-huge bed, and they’re lined up right in front of each other, like a bold and not-so-beautiful reminder that Evan’s eyes look like raisins and that his nose looks like the Eiffel tower and that his mouth is always wrung like a clothes line. And his hair—his stupid, horrible hair—stands out like a lighthouse on the ocean.

His best friend, Calvin Oliver, says it looks like a beacon. “Like, ‘beacon of hope’?” Evan had asked.

“No, like, ‘stupid,’” was the response. Evan rubs his stupid, already sweaty hands on his dinosaur pj’s—of course they’re his goddamn dinosaur pj’s, because Evan’s just so mature and ready for this world. Stupid dinosaur pj’s.

“Don’t say that!” says James—he’s the soft one, if you’re playing stereotypes. “You’ll hurt the dino’s feelings.”

“It’s a green cartoon animal, James, I don’t think it really cares.” Martin.

Evan rubs his face—you know, like you see in movies, where it’s like a “get back on track!” call—but his hands just smother him with disgusting sweat. (“ _Great_ , you forgot they were _sweaty_ , _idiot_ ,” hisses Damien.) Ugh, his face is so greasy. If he steps outside his room, his mum might just die, right on the spot.

“Well, I’m sure you don’t look that bad!” says James.

 “Don’t just lie to make him feel better,” says Damien. James and Damien set an optimism spectrum: James at one end and Damien at the other. “You see that mirror? You see him? Look how disgusting he is.”

“Look how disgusting I am,” Evan repeats.

“See? He agrees.”

“Jesus,” James says, “do you ever get sick of being so mean, or is it, like, coded into your veins?”

“It’s my job. I keep him in line.”

“Shut up, Damien.” Martin slots himself back into the conversation.

“It’s not very nice to tell people to shut up, Martin.”

“Shut up, James.”

“You’re such a mum, James,” Evan says absentmindedly, then catches himself. “Sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologise to me, Evan, I’m you,” James says in reply.

“Yeah, but your name is James.”

“You can rename me if you want to. I won’t mind.”

Evan shakes his head. It’s so easy to get carried away—it kinda gives “stuck in your head” a whole new meaning. He swishes a look at the clock.

“Six-fifty,” Martin reports.

“Oh, congrats, I can’t tell the fucking time,” goes Damien’s snake tongue.

“Now, he’s just trying to be nice, Damien,” goes James’ mum tongue.

Damien rolls his eyes. (Yeah, Evan can _see_ him. It’s a bit sad. He looks like a knockoff Brendon Urie.) “Can you please just shut up, James.”

“Can we get back on track?”

“Can _you_ shut up?”

“Can you please stop being so mean?”

“I’m being _mean_? I’m just trying to . . .”

Their arguments overlap, and Evan officially stops caring and just lets their voices fade into white noise—which sounds pretty ridiculous, but it’s not actually that hard once you’ve descended so far into irony it’s not even funny anymore.

 It’s seven o’clock now— _goddamn_ —and the panic is welling, welling, welling, welling up in his chest like a thick milkshake. Evan doesn’t usually make comparisons like that but, _woah_ , he’s hungry—when was the last time he ate?—and he doesn’t remember if he’s packed his bag or not and he hasn’t tried out his uniform and—

“Hey, you think we should take a mental health day?”

James’ voice breaks him out of his little reverie. His voice is just the right mixture of assertive and affectionate. _He really is like a mum_ , Evan’s thinking.

“Probably.” Damien shrugs.

“You can _not_ take a mental health day on the first day. Are you an actual brainlet?” Martin says. “You’ll have to come back on the second day and fit yourself in while everybody already knows everybody and you’ll either have to ask for the class roll, or actually _ask_ , in _person_ , for their names—and do you remember the last time that happened?”

“Oh yeah, he cried like a wuss.”

“Don’t call him a wuss, Damien, he’s trying his best.” You know, with the amount of times James defends him from himself, Evan ought to make him a knight.

Evan groans, easing himself into his bed. He just wants to melt into the sheets and maybe die and never be seen again. First days are horrible, second days are horrible, third days are horrible, days are horrible. But first days are horrible incarnate. Like a snake coiling around your throat. You have to sit there and make yourself sound _interesting_ and _fun_ —you know, like that’s so easy to do. Last year at Boy Scouts, he tried to make the “Iston! Like—is, and ton. Like—an elephant is a ton!” pun but he stumbled through the first half and instead of pronouncing the _ph_ in ‘elephant,’ he spat on the boy sitting across from him. It wasn’t even a good joke—James came up with it in the shower.

And via prompt from James, Evan starts to do his breathing exercises—in, two, three, four; out, two, three, four. He begins breathing, carefully, making sure every breath is so goddamn slow his body starts shaking. It’s not working— _it never works_ —every time he breathes in, he sees himself getting flung into an endless whirlwind of chaos and destruction and second-hand backpacks and he doesn’t even have the time to sit back and admire how absolutely overdramatic that is.

Anyway, Damien decides it’s time for his opinion—he sounds like the lovechild of Bernie Sanders and Bill Clinton and Evan Iston—and he’s saying: “Do you really want to go? Do you _really_? Don’t you think they’re just gonna laugh at you again? Because I do.”

Martin says they should “call Damien what he really is—a bitch” but Evan doesn’t really, uh, like that idea. Martin and Damien swear like sailors, but Evan, he’s . . . he’s clean. Or he tries to be.

And in the meanwhile, the real world sneaks up behind him and the dam snaps right open.

“Oh, Jesus Christ, c’mon, don’t cry,” snaps Martin. “You always cry.”

“Go away,” Evan says.

“No can do. I’m a part of you.”

“Go away.”

“He didn’t word it very well, but I do agree with Martin!” says James. “You should go! First days can be fun!”

“They very well cannot be.”

“Evan, c’mon,” James presses again. “We’re trying to be more positive this year, remember? Say it with me.” He claps. “First. Days. Can. Be. Fun.”

“First days are hell. Incarnate.”

“Oh, that wasn’t close at all.”

Martin huffs a haughty laugh, like he’s any better than Evan—he’s not, he’s not at all, because absolutely no alpha exists in this stupid body of Evan’s, not at all.

“You know what Mum will say if you don’t go?”

She’ll say he’s missing out.

“You know what Mum will be if you don’t go?”

Disappointed. Evan sits up. School it is, then, whatever.

“I don’t even know why you want him to go,” Damien says. “We were all for a mental health day a few minutes ago.”

“Would you prefer him attend second day instead?” And then Martin makes a show of wiping huge, fake tears off his face, and Evan gets the general message: “Evan Iston Crying In The Bathroom.”

 

Evan has two uniforms. The original, and the recolour. White, and black. (“Well, not _black_ , it’s navy blue,” blabbers Martin. “Dark navy blue.”)

White for summer, he supposes. It’s summer right now. Evan slots his tiny, lanky arms into the shirt’s respective holes, and once his head re-emerges, he looks a bit like a turtle. He stares at the mirror, and the mirror disapprovingly stares back at him.

“Ouch, that’s ugly, my dude,” Damien disapprovingly comments.

Martin cocks a disapproving eyebrow. “Aesthetically unappealing.”

James stumbles through a few syllables, then says: “OH . . . Oh, well, it’s not that bad!” so Evan knows he’s absolutely screwed.

“You’ll get used to it!” James says. “Soon you won’t look horrible anymore!”

Awesome.

“Lanky,” Damien says, “why’re you so lanky?” Lanky, but not tall. So, ugly.

“His dad’s lanky, too,” Martin replies. “Runs in the family.”

“Yeah, like those lanky legs can run.”

“Oh my god.” James sighs. “Damien.”

“Yah?”

“Stop.”

“Whatever.”

Evan stares his reflection right in the eye. (A month ago he challenged himself to maintain unwavering eye contact with himself as he undresses, but that just became awkward after about five minutes.) He flattens his hair down, exhales slightly. Jesus, he’s gone off way too many times about it, but his hair looks like some kind of disgusting red sheep. And a beacon. And it’s ugly.

“Don’t call it ugly,” says Martin. “Aesthetically unappealing.”

“Aesthetically unappealing,” Evan echoes.

“See? Doesn’t that just send pure chills down your body?” Martin practically swoons. “It’s such a beautiful phrase.” It’s like every word he says just gets sadder and sadder and sadder, and it’s honestly humiliating that Martin’s even a part of Evan’s subconscious at all.

“Ignoring Martin,” knockoff Brendon Urie rolls his eyes, “make sure your bag’s all together. Pack your pencil case, or whatever.”

“Okay.” Christ, Damien didn’t have to act like being an actual helpful person physically pained him.

“I’m not here to help you out, Evan, I’m your reality check,” Damien says, and Evan checks himself for a second before remembering that, _yeah_ , they’re in his _head_ , they can _read_ his goddamn thoughts.

It’s actually really easy to forget about that. Cal once caught him, uh, “talking to himself”—well, he was actually talking to _Damien_ , but it’s not like _Cal_ could ever know that—and Evan would’ve been grateful if a giant hole opened up in the ground and just swallowed him right there. (“Who’s Damien? Your imaginary friend?” teased his actual friend, and Evan said no, even though that was technically correct.) James always reminds him to keep it all in—“We can read your thoughts, okay? No need to act all crazy in public!”—but it’s really a lot harder than it sounds. It’s hard, managing four different train of thought without combusting on the spot.

“Sorry,” he says, then turns back to his bag. What does he need? Notebooks, textbooks, uh . . .

“Laptop, probably,” Martin chips in. “Mum got you a new one.”

Right. New laptop. Evan’s never owned a laptop before—it’s crazy. He might go mad with power. He’s got a _laptop_. In his _room_. And his parents aren’t allowed to _use it_. God, he could learn to hack, and then they’ll be sorry. (He doesn’t know what they’ll be sorry for—yet.)

Anyway, he zips it up— _byuuuup!_ —and steps back, staring at his bag like it’s one of those Sculptures By The Sea. Fine handiwork, if he does say so himself.

“Yes, it’s splendid,” says Martin affirmatively, and Evan beams despite everything. “I reckon today’s going to go just fine.”

“Oh, shut up.” Damien’s stupid voice cuts in like it always does, loud and cocky and everything Evan isn’t. “He knows it, we know it, he’s just going to fuck up and he’s—”

“We’re gonna be fine!” Evan says, clapping a few times to really get into the mood, you know? _It’s going to be fine_ , he tells himself, Damien, Martin, and James. _It’s going to be just fine._

After all, he’s got his bag all done, he looks okay—or, he _will_ , someday—and Cal’s at this new school, so all is great, right?

Yeah. He’ll just have to hope.


	2. Calvin Oliver

There is not enough water in the world to quench Calvin Oliver’s thirst. Every single cell in his entire body is screaming, howling, beating him over the head— _“hey asshole where’s the fucking water I think I’m dying,”_ they’re saying—and it feels like his throat is going to physically eat him from the inside. Sitting on the train—seven in the morning, squashed against this lady who could not look any more miserable—is like drowning in a pool of molten lava, and yet at the same time it’s also like a tiny Eskimo is pressing a fridge-full of ice to his balls.

And it’s so. Fucking. Early.

It just feels bad, all over, like you’ve been drunk for years, and can’t remember what it feels like to be sober, or happy, or even just feeling the sun on your skin. His dad’s not even home, and Cal and his mum shared the most awful awkward hug this morning, and, honestly, this Tuesday is definitely hitting the books as the absolute Best Worst Day Ever.

His brain’s jumping all around the train, like a dog off the shits, and his body is jittering with what must definitely be fatigue—somehow—because it’s definitely not coffee. (Cal’s note: He’s only had coffee once—when he was eight—because apparently it “messes with his head” or whatever.)

In his brain, a huge, sweeping game-show curtain lifts off the stage and one of his brain-goblins conjures a brain-mic and holds it up to Cal’s face and asks him, “How much sleep did you get last night?” The three options:

  1. **A healthy 8 hours!**
  2. **3 hours . . .**
  3. **18 minutes, not consecutively, but, still, it’s fine.**



(Cal’s note: It’s C.)

He distinctly remembers his mum telling him to pack his bag, and he even more distinctly remembers not doing it. Ask him why, he shrugs. His bag’s lighter, he’s missing every single textbook on the book list, but at least he doesn’t have to lob around three tons of bricks on his back all day.

Anyway, the book list is longer than the Olympic track, so he’s got a wad of sticky notes, and a slightly blunt pencil. It’s the first day, anyway. He’ll probably just sleep. Cal hates everything about this day already.

See, it’s here where he’d probably daydream about his holiday or whatever, but he honestly can’t remember anything about it. It’s like he hit holiday zone, went into a coma, and once he woke up, his best friend, Evan Iston, was already going off about middle school starting in two days. (And if he’s completely, absolutely honest, he’d probably ditch first day if it weren’t for Evan. A real freak chance how someone as sweet and innocent as him ended up with a guy like Cal. Weird.)

The train keeps jerking to weird stops, like the conductor’s not even awake, and Cal doesn’t really blame them. He wouldn’t actually mind being killed, right now. Wouldn’t have to walk into Bayshore and pretend to give a shit about anything that’s going on. (God. He can’t even tell if he’s overreacting.)

Cal likes first days, he really does. He likes the newness of everything—he likes the new settings, he likes the new people, he likes the new classes. What he doesn’t like: holidays ending and all the post-holiday depression. _Lost_ -style flashbacks of going to the beach, or hitting the city, or just laying around melting in the sun—as long as it wasn’t under the pretence of school. But now it is. Now he has to sit around for six hours a day in a sweaty rat cage, listening to someone who’s just as fed up as he is scream at him for doing the wrong thing. (And according to teachers, Cal’s _always_ doing the wrong thing. It’s his brand.)

The thing about being Dead Out Of Your Mind is that you can never tell if you’ve always been this cranky, if you’re even supposed to be cranky, if you’re supposed to honestly just fucking chill, or if life is handing you a card that says, _“Yeah, dude, fucking go off. You deserve it. Things kinda suck right now.”_

Finally, the train jerks to _the_ stop, Cal takes a second to rein his mind back in, then wiggles out of the delirious crowd. He occupies his eyes with a few ads displayed across the passage (there’s a huge healthy eating campaign spanning at least two hallways), and his brain occupies itself with the new school. Cal toured Bayshore with his mum last year, and it really wasn’t that interesting. “ _Welcome to Bayshore High,”_ the tour guide said, and then he zoned out. When he got home, he asked his mum about the tour and she gave him the usual: a shrug.

But, it’s whatever, right? Cal decides he doesn’t exactly care what the school looks like, anyway. He should just take what he gets, or whatever. Not like he’s a school connoisseur or anything. As long as the bathrooms aren’t piss-jacked, it’s good with him.

The station’s actually called Bayshore Street—the school’s only about a walking distance of two minutes. He’s not dying to get in, but it’s not exactly like he’s making any kind of living here, on the streets.

Bayshore High casts its gloom and doom three metres ahead, and he really, really wants to use the word ‘erected.’ Cal steps through those arching gates, and the sun’s glaring in his eye, and he half-expects to . . . what, feel a change? Like, maybe something in the air, or a status message: “ _Calvin Oliver has been elevated to pre-teen!_ ” but no cigar.

Yesterday, he told Evan he’d meet him somewhere around the front, and then Evan said, “Where’s the front?” and Cal said, “Don’t worry about it,” and he’s only now realising that he probably should’ve maybe worried about it. Evan’s nowhere to be found around here, either.

There are about seventy million paved paths seething from the entrance, and it’s a lot of responsibility, really—he doesn’t believe he’s ever had more than three choices. A lot of trees, either way. A lot of bush. One path leads downstairs, and another path leads to this real ass, 1500’s-style courtyard, and another path leads to what’s probably the senior school, because there’s a sign that says, “Bayshore Senior School.”

And then he sees it. He sees it, the canteen, and—ohhh my god. It’s the biggest thing he’s ever fucking seen. It’s . . . geez, how does he even describe this? It’s towering, yet comforting—new, yet homely—and, god, can a building be handsome? This building is handsome. It’s painted in the most beautiful red—each brick, each layer, each tiny little detail looks _intricate_ and _intentional_ , and the inside . . . sexy. This canteen is the hottest thing he’s ever laid his eyes on.

He’s standing there, gaping, like a sailor lost at sea. _A temptress_ , he thinks, _it’s like a handsome male temptress_. But then the red reminds him of another, less handsome red—Evan Iston, his brain supplies—and, with a greater effort than he’d ever admit to Evan, he kicks his feet up off where they’ve been rooted and star-struck, and he swerves down the stairs.  

The elusive “Bayshore Middle School” isn’t anything amazing. If he had to write a change log, Cal would say, “Less trees, more maze.” It’s like a labyrinth of brick walls and beige tiles that might’ve once upon a time been white. There’s, like, hallways upon hallways upon hallways, and somewhere down the Fifth a lady taps him on the shoulder and says, “Hey, kid, you new?” with the kind of energy you’d find from someone he’s known for years and he says yes. She asks him if he knows where he’s going and he says no.

“Year 7’s are meeting down at the small oval,” she says. “Give me a minute, I’ll fish out my map.”

 _Pfft_. Bayshore’s ovals have a sizing system, and Cal feels like he’s ordering at Macca’s. He’ll add to the change log: small ovals (not to be confused with large ovals, or medium ovals, or even medium-large ovals).

The lady circles her finger a few dozen times around this green square somewhere down east and Cal’s nodding very rapidly, and eventually she just circles it with an actual red pen and insists he keep the map.

Before she leaves, Cal asks her, “So, all the sevens are gonna be there? Evan, too?” and she says she doesn’t know who Evan is, but yeah, probably, so he nods again, thanks her, then reverses a few hallways, thinking up a new name: _‘Calvin Oliver And The Quest For The Green Square, Possibly The Small Oval, Where He Will Hopefully Find Evan Iston.’_

God, he wishes he could teleport.

 

Cal’s never felt the need to send Evan any Meet Up texts. In fact, he doesn’t even worry about it most of the time; Evan’s hair is honestly like one of those red pins you see on Google Maps that tells you exactly where your destination is. And— _there!_ —Cal sees him now, standing out like a beacon even in the bustling colony, but still finds himself sending a text. Calling out to the guy in any shape or form usually gives him really bad shocks; it’s like he thinks he’s some sort of fugitive.

 **“hey dude, turn around ;)”** Send.

One thing Cal’s always enjoyed is watching people react to texts from afar. It’s creepy—sure, whatever—but there’s something absolutely adorable about the bubbly way Evan jumps, looks around, then purses his lips and straightens out his everything, like he’s been chosen to star on _The Price Is Right_. (So, maybe he just enjoys watching _Evan_ react to texts. Whatever. Cal’s got a good eye for a cute boy.)

He lets the cute boy squirm for a few more seconds, then migrates into the crowd, waving his arm idly like a flag. Evan’s eyebrows are set in a confused tick. Cal weaves in and out and in and out—navigating through waves of people must be a talent of some sort—then greets his friend with a simple, “Yo.”

Evan rotates almost robotically, squints, then something in his eyes softens with recognition.

“Cal!” he says, bubbling with this sense of nervousness and adorability that could definitely warm a stone cold, dead heart. “Please stop, uh, sending me these really cryptic texts.”

“Cryptic?” Cal snorts. “I literally just told you to turn around.”

“And the— the winky face? What was that about?”

He shrugs. “Turn around sensually.”

“Gah!” Evan frowns. “That’s creepy. Other people could be watching.”

“Would you do it if other people _weren’t_ watching?”

Surprisingly, Evan actually thinks about this. (There’s also something adorable about the way he takes everything Cal says to heart.)

“Well, uh,” Evan says, “no.”

“Well, that sucks.”

“Sorry.”

Cal strains to catch a glimpse of some corkboard a few people-rows away. “What’re those, class arrangements?”

“Cal, you look tired,” is what Evan says instead. Then he shakes his head. “Oh, sorry, umm. That wasn’t really an answer. What was your question?”

Cal points. “Class arrangements?”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Have you read them yet?”

Evan looks down. “No.” Figures. Evan looked kinda helplessly sandwiched in here the first time Cal saw him.

“That’s okay.” He shrugs, then takes Evan’s hand. “Then let us venture in closer, pard’ner.”

Cal tugs and tugs, and Evan blabbers and blabbers—“Sorry!” / “Excuse me!” / “Sorry, umm, coming through!”—until they reach the board.

“God, Evan,” Cal says, “it’s like you think you’ve gotta apologise for fucking breathing. _Chill_ , man.”

“Sorry.”

He and Evan stare up at the board—at the _chart_ pinned to the board, divided into, like, six columns—and Evan shivers.

“What’s wrong?”

“Sorry, I was just, uh, thinking— thinking about, umm . . .” Evan trails off. He stares off, too.

“What’s wrong?” Cal repeats.

“I hope we’re in the same class.” Evan sighs. “Like, umm, same mentor class, I guess. Middle school works that way . . . apparently.”

“Evan.”

“Yeah?”

“I will fucking throw down if we’re not together.” He takes Evan’s hand. “I will fucking. Throw. Down.”

Evan giggles, or chuckles, Cal’s not sure. “Legally? Is that legal?”

“Whatever it fucking takes.” _Squeeeeeze_. God, Evan’s hands are so sweaty. “Now for the safari hunt of a lifetime. Tell me if you see ‘Calvin Oliver,’ ’kay?”

“And tell _me_ if you see ‘Evan Iston.’”

 

Cal and Evan have been friends—best friends, even—for seven years, and, well, once you’ve stuck around for that long, it becomes practically—universally, even—illegal to get split up. And, what do you know, the world’s worked for them again (there they are: Calvin Oliver, Evan Iston—7H.03) and he doesn’t have to issue a lawsuit. It’s like an immunity. Like God saw them still holding hands at Year 6 grad. and decided, “You know what? Sure. You’ve made it this far.”

Cal looks over to see Evan beaming. He grins back. Evan notices and drops the face immediately.

“Happy?” asks Cal.

“Mmm . . . Maybe.”

He laughs. “Good.”

Then the loud speaker crackles and Cal looks up to see this middle-aged woman walking towards the above podium, and he hears Evan whisper, “The opening speech!” and he sighs. God, he loves—absolutely _despises_ —these. Students are all nervous and tired on the first day and what do these principals do about it? They suck their own dick for ten minutes. The students never even listen (or, well, Cal doesn’t, for one). It droops in one ear and leaks out the other, and that’s just how it is.

And sure enough, the lady—“Mrs. Lovelady here,” she says, sounding like she’s talking out of a wormhole—starts speaking, something about how lucky she is to be here, how lucky they are to be here, morals, values, all that shit. Cal isn’t really paying attention, his vision is blurring every now and then, and he’s hyper-focused on the fact that Mrs. Lovelady looks like crinkled sandpaper. It’s low to pick on looks or whatever, but honestly, Cal would probably suck dick for a chance to be cynical on a day like this.

So, he hiss-whispers his commentary to Evan: “God, she looks like the receptionist from _Monster’s Inc_.” Evan snickers. Hell yeah. It’s so much fun bitching to an audience.

 “What kind of name is ‘Lovelady,’ anyway?” Evan says quickly out of the side of his mouth. His arms stay rigid at his side. “Sorry.”

“No, yeah, it’s kinda creepy, to be honest.” Cal smiles. It’s so much _more_ fun bitching with someone else. “Or just sad.”

Evan snickers again, but it’s lighter, so it’s probably more of a giggle. In a world rife with _The Shining_ and _Psycho_ and _IT_ , Evan’s the kind of person who can actually pull off a giggle, which is probably an achievement in and of itself.

Luckily, this Lovelady lady wraps up her speech pretty quickly—in principal terms, something Cal came up with when he was seven. ‘Be down in a minute,’ translates to, ‘I’ll be three hours. Also, your child is failing maths.’

“I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay at Bayshore,” she says, like it’s a hotel. Hotel Bayshore. Mornings at 7 and no complimentary breakfast. A few students clap, Evan being one of them. Cal not.

“Now, we’ll start introducing mentors—I hope you checked the notice board!—and we’ll usher you off to your teachers. Starting with 7A.01 . . .”

Cal takes a second to look at the mentor teachers, all lined up like soldiers in the army, which certainly makes things a lot more interesting. He clasps Evan’s hand again; Evan gives a tiny little gasp.

7H.03’s commander is a stiff, bald man. ( _Now, that’s a real commander_ , Cal’s thinking.) He sounds like . . . rocks. There’s no better way to put it. He sounds like a pile of rocks rubbing together. Maybe it’s the bald. If he had to make a bad movie reference, Cal would say he looks like Professor X.

Discount Professor X says but a word—“Greetings.”—then leads the flock, like, uh, ducklings, back to a classroom down . . . down . . . _down_ stairs, and all Cal’s thinking is _Fuck_. Some other students groan; Evan looks mildly uncomfortable.

The classroom, when he gets inside, is actually kinda . . . primary school. There’s the alphabet hung over the whiteboard—rainbow coded, naturally—and there’s a few posters on the walls that’re like, “Appropriate attire is required!” and “Nouns are cool!” and “Laughter makes the world go ’round!” And there’s, uh . . . minions. From _Despicable Me_. A lot of minions. He stares back at Mr. HairEx, whose name is actually Mr. Mallory, looking completely out of his element. Like cracking open a grenade just to see it overflow with candy.

Cal laughs inwardly, however that works. What, is this dude a Buff Sweetheart? Do those kinds of people even exist?

He turns to see Evan just standing there, blinking. “Wow,” is all he says. “Wow.”

“Wild,” says Cal.

“Yeah,” says Evan. “Wild.”

Sir Stones-a-lot slithers his way to the front of the classroom, taps twice on the whiteboard.

“Welcome, class,” he says, stiffly. “Welcome to your mentor classroom.”


	3. Evan Iston

Icebreakers. All is just so great, Evan’s about to turn on the waterworks. (He thinks it’s a bit hard to break the ice when you’ve encased yourself in seventy-three thousand layers of it.)

The class is all huddled around in a circle—Evan’s kinda awkwardly sitting on the outskirts, too awkward to ask for a spot and not really caring anyway. Cal’s seated about seven people away, Evan doesn’t know how that’s happened. They kinda just slipped into the crowd, got minced, sliced, and canned, and once they re-emerged, Cal was over on the other side of the room and Evan had somehow attained a girl’s fake earring.

Currently, they’re doing a little something called the Name Game. Pretty self-explanatory: there’s a yellow foam ball involved, and Evan’s 99% sure this school is already riding on his death. Just look at Evan for one godforsaken second—he’s scrawny, ginger—does he really look like he can catch a ball? He’s practically sweating a solid eight through the Earth. _Itchy. Ugh. Disgusting._ Best case scenario: he won’t catch the ball, and then it’ll knock him in his stupid goddamn nose, and then he’ll start to cry, and then he’ll be sent to the office, and then—

“And then everyone will laugh at you,” says Damien, like a curse. He perches himself on a desk, idly watching as a kid’s head phases right through him. Evan briefly wonders if it’s ethically appropriate to seize his own anxiety by the neck and snap it.

“On the flip-side, he could _catch_ the ball,” Martin says, with a pointed index finger. (“I’ve got to look smart somehow,” is what he says, “since you—most infuriatingly—don’t own a single pair of glasses.”)

Damien snorts. “Nah.”

“I would say he has a . . . slim 17.25% chance.”

“ _Nah_.”

“Fair enough.”

Evan tilts his head slightly—not noticeably, probably—to catch sight of James, but his mum friend just frowns. He doesn’t even say anything, he just frowns. Evan’s not sour, not at all.

“Sorry, I don’t do well with statistics,” James says quietly, smiling this old-man smile. He’s bouncing his leg, and Evan is, too. “I’m a bit worn out. Sorry. You’re sweating a lot.”

_Sweat wears you out?_

“Kinda. You being worn out wears me out.”

Evan trains his eyes back on the ball. Guess he is pretty worn out already. It feels a bit like he’s just died and been brought back to life but all his intestines are still messed up, and he doesn’t like it.

So, he blinks, and he refocuses, and then Martin says, “ _Fuck_ ,” and then Evan realises just what’s happening a lot too late. There’s a bite-sized rock, hurtling straight for his head. There’s red lights, flicking on and off and on and off, inside his head. There’s Martin, screaming, “Danger zone! Danger zone!” inside his head.

And there’s Evan, baring his teeth like that’s gonna scare it away, willing any part of his body to do even the bare minimum, but his body and his mind and his everything is racing, kicking, chanting: _“You’re gonna cry, you’re gonna cry, you’re gonna cry, you’re gonna—”_

 “BALLIN’!” Damien suddenly shouts, and Evan bolts right up. “Ballin’!”

James returns the call: “ _BALLIN’_!”—loud, hecklerish—and, Jesus Christ, Evan’s glad he’s never heard him scream. “You caught it! DUDE—that is amazing!”

Eyes: down. Rock: hands. Ball: caught. _Bam: splat_.

Evan loses all feeling and astral projects straight to Hell.

Ball: **_what?_**

The second it registers, he pulls a circus juggler and the ball flops out of his grasp like a hot potato. (A few people laugh, Damien included.) He leans back and just _breathes_ for a while, his heart—active, hammering—going wild, feeling like a huge shotgun loaded in his chest. And that imagery makes his heart go even faster. (“Gun?!” Martin demands. “Why the ever-loving fuck would you compare it to _gun_?!”)

Mr. Mallory clasps his hands together; Evan dies.

“Would you like to introduce yourself, Iston?”

“Woah, just ‘Iston.’ Not even ‘Mr. Iston.’” Martin gives this sort of low whistle. _Are you trying to catcall my mentor teacher?_ “This dude. I like his style.”

Evan feels a stutter building up in his throat. That just _happens_. He hates himself.

“U-Umm . . . sure . . .” He stares out at the sea of people—26 beady-eyed kids, all ready to mark down this event for history—and his stomach does seventy million kickflips, kicks itself in the shin, and screams. He can practically see Damien pulling out his left eye, dramatic, “I can’t look!” style.

“You can do it!” James whispers and Evan nods, choosing to ignore the river of “ _no you can’t no you can’t no you can’t_ ” streaming out of Damien and the highway of “ _die die die die die die die die die_ ” riding out of Martin.

 “Well, um, uhh . . .” Evan swallows. _Goddammit. Screwed up already_. (“Now would be a good time to die,” notes Martin from the side.) “Well . . . my name is, umm . . .”

26 people. All staring at him. Expectantly. And now that he’s taken about five seconds to form a—not even—coherent sentence, they’re all looking at him like he’s going to recite the Declaration of Independence. He inhales, but the breath has to fight through five separate barriers of snot, and once it emerges it sounds all thick and icky and disgusting and he wants to melt into the ground.

“M. . .My name is Evan—”

“Evan!” someone laughs. “Like, ‘Evanescence’?” And Evan feels himself go bright pink. He just wants to give up right now. He just wants to tell the universe, _“Alright, after a lot of consideration, I’ve decided that this life is just too much for me.”_

“Iston,” he slowly continues. “E. . .v-van. . .Issss. . .ton.” He sounds like a snake. Or Professor Snape. Or both. At once. (“You do know that it’s incredibly dislikeable when someone introduces themselves like that,” Martin says, helpfully. “When they stretch out their name like snake skin.” Evan tells him to shut up.)

Someone else snickers quietly, like the light clanging of a cymbal in third grade band. Evan wants to die. He’s dying already, actually. Nope, he’s dead. He’s already dead. James makes a bad Japanese joke. Evan’s gonna strangle him when they get back home.

“Anything else you want to add?” Mr. Mallory says, peacefully, this time like a stream of water gently caressing the ground. Or something, he doesn’t know. Evan gets all melodramatic on his death bed.

His voice fights the valiant battle past layers and layers and layers and layers and layers of snot, to choke out a final dying cry: “No, thank you.”

“Very well.” No, his _teacher_ sounds more like Professor Snape, Evan’s starting to realise. Mr. Mallory eyes the yellow monster, slain, laying on the floor beside Evan. Damien eyes it, too; Martin squints.

“I think he wants you to pass the ball, sweetie,” James says. ‘ _Sweetie_.’  When’s the last time James used that one? Jesus Christ, Evan _is_ dying.

He grips the ball and his sweat starts to colonise new yellow, foamy waters. Okay, okay. Passing isn’t _that_ bad, he just needs to toss it away in some sort of graceful manner and whatever happens next is the recipient’s problem—that is, unless his throw goes haywire and it ends up rigging the ceiling fan and sticking there for years and becoming the new urban legend. _“That ball . . . they say it’s been rooted here for years, released from the hands of an ugly ginger with messy hair. It hasn’t moved since.”_ And he’d be the instigator. The ugly ginger.

Evan wimps out and just passes it to the guy next to him, and the class laughs at him like he deserves.

 

He isn’t really _there_ for the next half an hour. He’s dying. He’s watching his body from a faraway space shuttle—watching this stupid vessel stumble around, fingers tangled together like headphone wire—and he honestly just looks so stupid. Every now and then Cal shoots him this look Evan can’t interpret very well. Maybe it’s concern. Maybe it’s pity. Maybe it’s mockery. Maybe, maybe, maybe. (“Probably mockery,” Damien says, but Evan ignores him or whatever.)

Their class has broken up into six separate groups. There’s four other people here with Evan—but still no Cal. (His luck ends here, he reckons. He was greedy for a class with Cal and now he’s being punished.) His best friend’s off in Circle 3, while Evan’s in Circle 5, near the door. He could run if he wanted to. He could leave right now. He could go home. He could go home and cry, all day, instead of being here.

Of course he couldn’t. He’s too much of a wuss to do that.

Mr. Mallory throws out another icebreaker—“What do you want to be in twenty years’ time?” (How long have they been doing icebreakers?)—and Evan says a firefighter, even though he’s terrified of fire and danger and potential death. But firefighter seems normal— _sane_ —enough, and the teacher nods his head with a gentle “Mhm,” like he wasn’t really listening. The other students list off their careers, Evan lets them zoom in and out his head—doctor, architect, Woolworths employee, vet—also not really listening. This girl in Circle 3 near the birthday chart—she’s got what looks like a girl’s bowl hair cut—waits until everyone’s stopped talking, waits for Mr. Mallory to re-ask the question, then says, “ _Dead_ ,” with her eyebrow quirked like she’s waiting for the class to give her a standing ovation. Three people laugh—Cal’s one of them. Evan isn’t.

Then they finally throw the curtain on those goddamned icebreakers—“More like _eye_ breakers,” Damien hisses. “What a fucking sight.” ( _Yeah, that’s just so funny_ , Evan’s thinking.) Mr. Mallory kicks them into serious talk mode or whatever, and Evan semi-inconspicuously shuffles back over to Cal’s side, because he’s probably the only saving grace in this classroom. Mr. Mallory’s talking about Bayshore’s morals and expectations and respecting teachers and students and classmates, but Evan’s too busy staring at Cal. He hasn’t done that enough today. (It’s not, like, a creepy thing. It’s just that Cal never takes care of himself, so, umm . . . Evan does.)

He did notice his friend looked really tired this morning, but Evan didn’t exactly bring it up in the best way. And, well, in the middle of a serious talk with Professor Snape is probably not the best way, either. Maybe he’ll get around to it at recess, if his words plan on working with him any time soon.

 

The rest of the period passes in a shaky blur of bouncing knees and tapping toes, he didn’t bring his Fidget Cube, and Evan just can’t shake off the feeling that something—or someone—is gonna jump on him. Is he paranoid? Yeah, add that to the list of Crazy. His body’s wracked with disorders, _and_ his pits are already damp with sweat. He’s probably a monster. A crazy, stupid, anxious monster.

He has a horrible feeling in his stomach, the same kind of feeling he gets when his mum makes him talk over the phone, or when he has to wait for the pizza delivery man to count his change back to him, or when he has to order takeout at the counter. He sits there and listens to Martin list off some possibilities: “You could be gassy, or nauseous—probably from medicine, remember the new pills this morning? God, I don’t know why Mum would potentially drug and/or kill you on the first day—or you could be sick. With the flu. Most likely.”

Damien chucks in his opinion: “Or you could have a tapeworm, or some kind of parasite living in your intestines.” Because when has he ever not done that.

“If it _is_ a tapeworm, Barry is a-go,” James says, then shakes his head. “Sorry, I mean—that wasn’t the best thing to say, sorry.” He smiles that smile again. “I mean, Evan, you don’t have a tapeworm. You’re fine! You’ll be fine. Trust me.”

James is super off. (Jesus Christ, how tired _is_ he?) But Evan nods—yeah, Barry’s a pretty good name. Apparently Bayshore’s dolphin mascot is named Barry; he saw it on a poster this morning, written in Bradley Hand. 

Looks like they’ve been given timetables. Cal slides himself up next to Evan, and he’s grateful for it. Cal’s an anchor, really, on a day like this.

“God, how do I even read this thing?” Cal whispers to him. “We have different classrooms? The fuck’s this? M10? What does that even mean?”

“I . . . think it’s a classroom.”

“Might be a shuttle. Or a robot. R2D2.02.”

Evan laughs. “I don’t know, man.”

And Cal shrugs exaggeratedly. “I’m gonna die out here in Bayshore. You’ll probably find my corpse in the nearest bathroom.”

It’s supposed to be a joke, yeah, but it still makes Evan shudder. Because he’s a goddamn wuss. And he can’t even stand the _idea_ of losing his best friend. And he’s _terrified_ of how big this place is. He’s never going to make it anywhere, he’s just gonna sit outside his mentor classroom and cry because that’s the only place he knows where to go. He couldn’t even scope out the school this morning; it’s _that_ big. And he was tired. Really tired.

“Hey.” Cal nudges his arm. “Hey. We have MAT together. MAT07. I’ve highlighted it in green.”

“I think that stands for ‘Maths,’ Cal.”

“Good. Green for gross.”

Evan squints at the timetable again. It’s all blurring. Gross. His vision’s just a scattered array of black lines. He feels like he’s having a stroke.

“We also have ENG, and FRE, and SCI,” Cal says, reading each abbreviation like it’s a disease. “Let me guess—Electromagnetic Neuron Game, Free Red Eraser, and So Cool Interesting.”

That pulls an ugly and loud snort out of Evan. “God, I wish.”

Someone sitting nearby makes the same noise.

“Dude, I’d say you’re stupid, but that’s goddamn genius,” they say. Evan tilts his head slightly. Oh. It’s Dead Bowl Haircut. Talking to Cal like she knows him. Okay.

Cal puts two hands up and doesn’t question it. “I’m not stupid. English, French, Science.”

“Yeah, I’ll give you that, dude,” she says. _Dude_ again. Jesus. Use _man_ or something. Get creative with your bro-speak.

Cal snorts, loud and handsome. He pats the ground to his left. “Sit over here, man. I’ll quiz you with HE, PE, and FT.” And she does. She actually moves to sit on his left. Evan’s on his right. Cal’s like a pimp. 

Evan tangles his fingers again, suddenly feeling like he’s an outsider to this conversation. Like it doesn’t belong to him anymore. He never learnt how to assert dominance; like, you’ll see in TV, where the all the popular girls go, “ _Umm_ , you don’t _sit_ here,” but if _he_ did that—he, small, not conventionally attractive—he’d probably get decked across the face. So, he shuffles a tad away. Stupid, stupid question—but when did they get so close? Cal laughed at her bad icebreaker joke. That doesn’t automatically bridge a bond. Does it? Maybe it does. Does it?

“No, it doesn’t,” Martin says. “Human relationships aren’t that easy.”

“Oh, and what relationships are?” Damien back-hands. “Horse relationships?”

“Potentially. Perhaps things are simpler when your legs are just huge fingers.”

What else happened in Circle 3? Was she sitting next to him there, too? Is Evan jealous? No way. What? It’s been two seconds. Evan can’t be jealous. Cal’s laughing at something she said again. Jesus Christ. He wants to curl into a ball and die.

“Calm down!” James cuts in. “It’ll be fine! You’ve been friends for ages! He met her _today_. Cal can make, like, five friends in five seconds and you’re still his favourite.” Really? Is he really?

 _Well then_ , he thinks, aggressively, somehow, _why do I feel so nervous? And why is he laughing? And when was the last time_ I _made him laugh like that?_ The pit that forms in his stomach stretches down quickly to suck/tear at his bladder. Cal’s so outgoing. He hates that. He hates that so much. How Cal makes it look so easy. How Cal makes him feel so replaceable.

“It’s soft laughter, Evan,” says James, softly. “You made him laugh this morning.”

Okay. It’s been an hour since this morning.

“Jealousy isn’t a good look, Evan,” says Martin. _Yeah, I_ know _, I’m not_ trying _to wear it_. Christ, he’s so insecure. His friend talks to someone else—someone he doesn’t know—for, like, a minute and he immediately assumes he’s been replaced and that’s it, that’s the end, their friendship is over, Cal’s found someone better, they’re gonna run off and have kids and Evan’s never gonna see them again.

“Look,” James says, “maybe you should try befriend her, too! You can all be friends! It’s about time you and Cal became a three, don’t you think?”

A beat of silence. Damien laughs, then Martin laughs, then Evan kicks down the urge to laugh.

“No, really,” James pushes on. “Are you just going to cling to Cal all year?”

Evan swallows. He hates thinking about this. (He thinks about it all the time.) What happens when Cal gets sick of him? What next? He needs to develop some other friendships to fall back on, but that’s kinda hard when he looks like a Ninja Turtle and sounds like a chipmunk and has the personality of a rock. His head aches, like something’s zapping him, over and over and over and over. _Tapeworm_ , he thinks. _This is it_.

First days are hell incarnate. He wants to talk to Cal.

“Cal doesn’t want to talk to _you_ ,” Damien hisses. “Give him a bloody break. Fuck off for, like, a second, would you? God, you’re overbearing.”

“ _Damien_!” James practically yells, jolting to alert. “Drop! The attitude! Please!”

Damien throws a dirty look to the ground. Evan’s chest is heavy and horrible. He wants to talk to Cal. And he just doesn’t understand why he can’t. He doesn’t understand why his mouth can so desperately not want to do something he so desperately _wants_ to do. And instead he has to sit here in 7H.03, watching literally everyone else form their social links, staring down at a timetable he can’t even read, feeling like he’s off somewhere in the fifth or sixth or tenth dimension—just not _here_. He just wants to cry. (He wants to talk to Cal.) Today’s been so horrible already.

Evan feels like an abandoned shopping trolley. An unfinished chore.

A body wracked with disorders.


	4. Evan Iston

Evan doesn’t see Cal again until recess, which means he doesn’t have to really talk to anyone until then. Which is a good thing. Or a bad thing; he’s not forming social links, which means he can’t use anyone in this class as a job reference. But he’s twelve, so he doesn’t know why he’s even thinking about that. Must be Martin. (“Wow, yeah, okay: ‘ _must be Martin_ ’, say it like it’s diseased,” Martin says. “Sorry I’m trying to look out for your future.” He’s a headache.)

Recess is right after the whole mentor fiasco—10:00, to be exact—which is twenty minutes earlier than its primary school predecessor. They’re also let out at 2:55, so that’s something Evan can definitely get behind.

Surprisingly enough, he doesn’t leave the classroom with Cal— _must’ve lost him in the crowd again_ —and instead finds him in the cafeteria, hungry-eyed, staring at a ceiling bar like he’s gonna eat it.

Evan walks up to him and says, “Hey!”

Of course he doesn’t. He just stands there and looks around, like an idle avatar. For the better, he reckons. What would he have said, anyway?

“‘ _Hey!_ ’ You could’ve said ‘ _hey!_ ’” James squeaks. “You were so close!” _But it’s not that simple, you see_ , he’d also have to think about enunciation, volume, exuberance, gesticulations . . .

“You’re a wreck.” Surprise!—that was Damien.

Cal finally turns around, which prompts Evan’s mind to make the connection between ‘just standing there’ and ‘being an absolute loser.’ Cal’s mouth parts open only very slightly; he’s probably used to the whole _Turn Around and BAM! It’s Evan!_ routine.

“Hey, dude. Evan.” Cal’s eyes do what looks like a perimeter check. “Hey, wanna go sit in the courtyard? Way many people here.”

Evan swallows. Cal doesn’t actually mind people, so he knows that was more for him. Which is nice, probably.

“Have you already gotten something to eat?” he asks. What time is it? How long did it take him to get to the goddamn cafeteria?

Cal just shrugs. “Ye _aa_ h.” (What on earth does _that_ mean?) His friend sighs. “Didn’t bring any money.” And he does this grimace that’s so grimacey, it’s like he’s stretching out his whole face. “I was just window shopping.”

“Do you _want_ to buy something?” Evan pats around his bag, and his keychains jingle so hard they sound like Chinese gongs. Probably. “I’ve probably got some mone—”

“Save it, save it.” Cal flicks one of his keychains—a small, plastic No Face. “They’re doing a bake sale on Thursday. I’ll bug you then.” He puts a hand against the small of Evan’s back and pushes gently, and Evan allows himself to be lead back out of the cafeteria, where Cal pats down a spot. Evan dries his hands on . . . shorts. New school shorts. He’s so gross. He’s so, so, so, so gross. Nobody else sweats like the goddamn Nile. Why does he even need to pee if all the water just comes rushing out of him like _this_?

“What’s going on?” he attempts, but it’s comes out more like, “What’sgoingon!” and he feels so stupid he almost misses Cal’s response.

“Nothin’, really. Do I look distressed? Asking for a friend.”

Evan snorts. Cal tends to have that kind of effect on him. The Loud, Obnoxious Horse Snort Effect. He’s been meaning to ask if it sounds weird, but he already asked Cal last week if his legs looked weird, and he’s limiting himself to one insecure intervention a month.

“Well, _you_ look kinda distressed,” he says, which makes Evan snort again because when _doesn’t_ he look distressed? “You look kinda sour.”

“Oh, do I?” is his reply, and it sounds sarcastic even though it wasn’t supposed to be.

“Yeah.” Cal stares at the steps coiled around the courtyard, then back at Evan. “Guess I should be pretty used to you, uh, disappearing, but it’s the first day, man. Where’d you go?”

Oh. Evan didn’t think he cared, to be completely honest.

“It didn’t look like I was needed,” he says, but he doesn’t. Instead he just shrugs and says, “Went to piss.”

“For five minutes?”

“Long one.”

“Long drip, huh,” Cal drags, “sounds painful.”

Now, _that_ was sarcastic. Cal’s so good at passive aggression, it’s amazing sometimes.

He sighs again. “Well, anyway. No big deal. I found you—or you found me—so we’re good.”

And Evan sighs, too, for some reason, probably out of relief. “Good.”

“Good.”

Then they sit—Evan scratches his arms, checks his bag, fiddles with his keychains: rinse and repeat. He can’t remember if he’s hungry or not. (He probably is, but there’s this certain thing about anxiety that fills you up until you’re so hungry your body stops working.)

“So,” Cal says, usually the way he starts conversations, “I’ve been sniffing around, and I’ve gathered the intel that this here—” He gestures around the courtyard, “this is recess.”

“The courtyard?” Evan asks, even though he knows what Cal meant, and only does it so he has something to say.

“The time period. That thing before? That was ‘ _Period 1_.’ And ‘ _Period 2_ ’ is next. _Whoo-oo_.” He pronounces ‘Period’ like it’s a new sea creature.

Evan nods semi-intelligently. “You don’t have to talk to me like you’re, uh, _National Geographic._ ”

“I’m not trying to.” He grins. “Apparently Confused Cal sounds like Cal Being An Intellectual. I should try be confused more often.”

“Old news. You’re always confused.”

“Fair point. Do I always sound like an intellectual?” He’s enunciating all his consonants—all his t’s sound succinct and polished—which is something Cal, like, never does, because apparently it’s a fad to slur your words. He sure sounds like an intellectual right _now_ ; Evan really admires how much Cal can stick to an act, sometimes.

“That’s debatable,” Evan says.

“Fair enough.”

And apparently ‘fair’ is an intellectual’s word. He’ll take note of that. (He’s been gathering ‘intellectual words’ in case an essay rears its ugly head. Martin has a ton, but he always seems to clock out during exam time.)

“ _A_ nyway.” Cal’s switched back to slurring. “Technically, _this_ is Period 2, but if you say that, you’ll probably sound like the kid who’s all ‘ _It’s tomorrow now!_ ’ at midnight. Like, shut up.” He snorts. “Recess and lunch don’t count as periods, you know. They’re safe havens, more like.”

Evan nods, probably three-quarters-intelligently. Cal always makes everything sound so interesting and funny; he’d make a good teacher. Evan’s told him that before, actually, but he couldn’t have taken it very well because he didn’t speak a word to Evan the whole day after that.

“This is kinda funny,” Evan says, kinda quietly.

“Hmm? What’s that?”

“Well, uh, you’re not usually the info-dumper.” _Gah_ —was that rude? He needs to make a joke. “Say, you happen to know where the toilets are?”

“I mean, I’d think you’d know; you went for that super long piss.”

Evan feels like he’s been knocked in the gut. Christ, he hates it when Cal’s this passive-aggressive. He thought they were “good.”

“I didn’t really go.”

“Ye _aa_ h, I thought so.” Cal grins again, and Evan’s trying to figure out whether _that’s_ supposed to be passive-aggressive too. Then he laughs. “Aww, did that girl scare you off? You got a girl problem? What are you, five?”

Jesus Christ. Passive-aggressive to the max. (“What’s his fucking problem?” Martin hisses, quietly, because both he and Evan know what the problem is.)

“That actually kinda hurt, Cal,” he whispers—is he allowed to say that? (“He’s your friend! Don’t sweat it!” James says. “You go, dude!”) Evan hates that he’s always so icky when it comes to standing up for himself. You could slap him across the face and _he’d_ probably apologise.

“Sorry.” Meanwhile, Cal shakes his head. “Sorry. Guess that was uncalled for. I dunno, dude, I just thought we’d stick together today, you know? Sorry.”

“Yeah,” Evan says, but he doesn’t really know what he’s ‘yeah’ing to. The ‘uncalled for’? The ‘sticking together’? All of it? Cal doesn’t need to be _sorry_ , not really. Does he? _Standing up for yourself_ must be a gene he didn’t inherit.

“Sorry,” Evan says, which sounds pretty stupid in retrospect. Apologising to an apology.

“What for?”

“You didn’t have to be sorry.”

“Well, I am. I’ve been pretty shitty all day. Right?”

Evan’s fingers latch onto No Face. “Not really. You’re great.” He shouldn’t fight with his best friend on the first day of middle school.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

And they let go. Evan’s got other keychains—Oshawott, from _Pokémon_ ; Tracer, from _Overwatch_ ; and an assorted range of gems (most of them are amethysts; they’re supposed to ‘help with physical ailments and emotional issues,’ but he’s had seven of them for four years and he still cries at least twice a week). But he likes No Face the most. It’s, uh, kinda cute, and it shows that he’s a nerd—but not so much of a nerd that he’d get shoved around in the hallways. Hopefully it gives off the Respected Nerd aura; _Spirited Away_ is pretty respected, like, everywhere.

“So,” Cal says, “what’s your next subject? Can I peek at your schedule?”

“Sure,” Evan says, and fishes it out, conveniently leaving out the fact that he has no clue how to even read it.

His friend studies it for a while, circles something . . . a few more things . . . then passes it back. “Just as projected!” _National Geographic_ voice kicks in. “You see that in green? Those are ‘mentor subjects.’ We’ll always have those together.” God, he sounds like a game tutorial.

“Gross,” Evan says.

“The subjects or the together?”

“The green.”

“Well, you know. Just trying to make it easier for you.”

Evan looks up. “What do you mean?”

“You look lost,” Cal says, frowning. “You look really lost. You didn’t look like you were really _there_ in class, you get me?”

“I probably wasn’t.”

Cal sighs. “Dude, you feeling okay?”

“Yes.”

Hesitation. “Good.”

“Yeah.”

No, Evan really doesn’t feel okay. Sure, he feels _better_ now—because Cal’s talking to him, finally—but he’s not _okay_.

“Well, what exactly does ‘okay’ even mean?” Martin says, speaking up for the first time in a while. “What defines ‘okay’?” Evan shrugs it off. They’ve made an agreement to pipe down when Evan has actual human conversations, so he doesn’t really think Martin expects an answer.

“Hey,” Cal says, softly, and Evan tilts his head. “Hey. You’re gonna be fine. You feeling anxious? You’re gonna be fine. We’re gonna be fine.”

Evan smiles kinda pathetically. It’s pathetic Cal has to do this; act like his therapist, or his mother, or James. Evan probably just gives off that kind of feel—the ‘ _Someone please help me! I look like a sad deer! Take me to the foster home!_ ’ feel.

“You believe me, right?” Cal squeezes his hand. Evan loves it when he does that; it makes him feel all warm and cosy, and, Christ, he loves this boy.

“Yeah,” Evan says. “I guess.”

“Good.” Cal checks his wrist; he does that a lot, even though he’s never worn a watch. “Well, looks like it’s _You Have Any Clue What Time It Is?_ o’clock.”

Evan checks his wrist; he actually does wear a watch—it saves him having to ask for the time. (And he’d rather gut out his lungs than do that, anyway.) “10:16. Four minutes before Period 2?”

“Oh, so you know when recess ends. Smart boy.”

He shrugs. Recess ends when recess would normally start. Easy brain wiring.

Cal snickers, like . . . like twenty wind chimes knocking against each other. He gets up, dusts off his not-sweaty shorts, then extends a hand. Like a prince. (Cal would make a good prince. Blonde, ragged, dashing— Evan’s not going to go down that path.)

“So—would you give me, Calvin Oliver, the honour of your hand?”

And Evan blushes so hard he can hear Damien taking out his own windpipe. Cal would make a good theatre major. Cal would make a good everything.

“Yeah, yeah . . .” Evan’s fingers latch onto Cal’s, “sure.”


	5. Evan Iston

Every other period for the day is green, except for Period 4—right after lunch—where Evan heads off to Art and Cal to Media. Evan’s not an artsy person (he’s not an any-sy person), but that doesn’t really matter because the teacher—Miss Fontenez; French, probably—spends an eternity trying to remember their names. For the last—what, ten minutes?—it’s just been:

 **Miss Fontenez:** “So, you’re Peter, and you’re Anne, and you’re Miko, and you’re . . . Oh no.”

 **poor soul #7:** “Miss, it’s fine, really—”

 **Miss Fontenez:** “No, no, no! Let’s take it from the top!”

Back and forth and back and forth. ‘Evan’ isn’t even an exotic name or anything, but she’s called him a rotating selection of ‘Ivan,’ ‘Alvin,’ and ‘Eve.’ It’s like she spins a roulette, and whatever misspelling she lands on, that’s it, bingo.

But at least it’s not icebreakers. He’s said his name enough _today_ to make up for a whole decade. Feels like poison on his tongue.

Evan sits next to the Peter kid, because he’s a male and about Evan’s size. So that’s two things Peter can’t pick on him for. Also, he has an _Overwatch_ bag; Evan wants one of those, but his parents paid a fortune for the ugly Bayshore brand, and now, in return, he has to wear discount Converse shoes _and_ he doesn’t get a cool, nerdy bag.

He thinks of giving Peter one of those friendly, light nudges, and giving him a friendly, light, “Hey, you play?” but he doesn’t because: 1) he hasn’t mastered the art of light nudging; and 2) he can’t see where the conversation would go next. Like, Peter would probably say, “Yeah, you idiot, look at my bag,” and Evan would say, “Haha, yeah, I saw that; who’s your fave?” and Peter would probably say some cool, muscular dude—like Hanzo—and then Evan would have to say, “Uh, I kinda have a crush on Tracer, even though I’m 99% sure she’s a lesbian.” And then Peter would move away, leaving Evan by himself.

Well, not by _himself_ —there’s a blonde girl on this table, too; her name’s Thaila, or something like that. But not like that’s any better; she’s a girl and she’s taller than him. She’d absolutely slam-dunk him in the Popularity Game.

So he sinks into his chair instead. (No, he doesn’t do that, either. Wouldn’t want other people to think he’s a sloucher.) (Even though he is.) He actually just tunes into the DaJaMa Radio.

“Are Art lessons always this boring?” Damien whines. He’s sitting with his feet on the table, which Evan thinks is unfair because apparently all the confidence _he_ doesn’t have is churned into Damien and his cocky, cocky politician voice.

“Not once you actually get to the art,” Martin says. He sits civilly on the chair to Evan’s right. (Peter’s on his left. Thaila’s on his front.)

“What, you actually enjoy this stuff?”

“Yes. And you do, too.”

Damien huffs.

“Oh, I wonder if we’re gonna paint!” James giggles. He’d probably be sitting on Evan’s left, too, if Evan weren’t such a wuss. Back when he was still getting used to James, Martin, and Damien following him around like restless spirits, James once sat inside someone and Evan cried so hard he was hiccupping for the next hour. So, instead, James sits on the floor. Or he floats.

“Jesus Christ, it’s like you’ve been given a plate of phrases and you deliberately choose the ones that make you sound like a stoner,” says Damien. “Or a five-year-old.”

“You _know_ a five-year-old stoner?”

“Cal, probably.”

In the _Is Cal A Law-Abiding Citizen?_ debate, Damien’s only ever got one point: Cal’s got a raspy throat. _Lozenges_ , Evan thinks. _He isn’t a stoner, he just needs lozenges_.

“Has he ever accepted lozenges from you, though?” Damien cocks an eyebrow so perfectly, Evan starts to wonder if the reason he fails at everything is because Damien’s taken all of his good traits.

“This conversation is stupid,” says Martin. “He doesn’t take lozenges from Evan because Evan’s hands are always sweaty. You don’t want that in your mouth, now, do you?”

Evan rolls his eyes, but, like, discreetly, so that Thaila doesn’t think he’s rolling his eyes at her, especially when they haven’t even spoken a single word to each other. (In the background, Miss Fontenez has gotten to Eduardo, who is two people further than last time. 14 more to go.) His conversations with James, Martin, and Damien—or their conversations among themselves—used to be 50% insult and 50% encouragement, but now the scale’s tipped more towards 75% insult and 25% not even encouragement, which must be some sort of deep metaphor for self-hatred or something, and maybe in a few months he’ll wind up in a specialised clinic, ripping off his ears.

 The thing about talking to yourself, or having conversations in your head, is that you’re not _really_ hearing anything at all. It’s all in your head. You can’t block your ears to make it go away, it’s always there, in the same volume, in your head. Like having a radio you can’t turn off.  

Miss Fontenez gave them lined paper to doodle on while she hacked away at the names, but it’s kinda hard to concentrate when she points at you like a guilty convict every time she gets to your name. Against all better judgement, Evan takes a peek at Peter’s sheet, because he’s actually done something with it. He doesn’t catch much, anyway; he keeps glancing away, then back again, away, back, away, back, away, until his eyes get tired and his brain is drunk dizzy. It always feels kinda dirty to look at someone else’s work without their knowledge, even when they haven’t made an effort to conceal it. Makes him feel like a robber.

But all he pickpockets are a few ‘S’s. No, really. That’s all that’s on Peter’s page. The Superman S. Five of them. (Evan’s kinda impressed, actually. He never learned how to draw those.) (He keeps thinking back on it, and he’s starting to realise he actually never learned to do practically anything.)

The girl across the table half-reaches out an arm. It looks more like a stretch, but she’s grinning, so maybe it’s an attention grabber. “I’m one of the harder ones,” she’s saying. “We’re almost there. Kinda hope she trips up. Heh.”

Thaila. Yeah, sounds pretty hard—if that’s even how you spell it at all. (First time Miss Fontenez came around, when they were all supposed to read their names to her, it came out like ‘ _Thai_ ’—the language—+ ‘ _lah_ ’, but maybe it’s spelt like ‘Teayyleia.’) (He wants to ask, but he’d probably sound stupid. Or creepy. When would he need to write her name, anyway? That’s like admitting to a stranger you have a huge stalker crush on them and need their name for a love journal.)

Anyway, Miss Fontenez climbs to Thaila, jabs a finger at her (to which she raises her eyebrows), and rolls through her name almost seamlessly (to which she lowers her eyebrows, looking a bit pissed, actually).

Evan attempts to form a human connection. “U-Uh . . . it didn’t . . .” And his mouth and his stomach say no. He shakes his head. “Looks like . . . it didn’t, um, work out.”

Thaila clears her throat, or coughs, or whatever. “Well, it did, actually. For her. Just watch, she’s gonna magically get past Jacques,” _Jack_ , “and Isla,” _Eye-lah_ , “and Siobhan,” _Shi-von_ , “and then she’s gonna make us do actual work in a sec.” And Evan only knows how _those_ names are spelt because they’re all in his class. Year 7’s going to kill him—and it’s not even going to be the work.

Thaila must have a thing for names; she’s pronounced every single one without any stutter or hesitation. Pretty much anyone who can say things without stutter or hesitation becomes instantly amazing in Evan’s mind, but Thaila’s like the cherry on _top_ of the cherry on top. If he were Ursula, he’d steal her voice. (Would that give him her stutter-free, no-worries-guarantee, too? Or just her voice?)

“Don’t you like Art?” Evan asks, even though every single inch of his body is telling him, _‘Stop! Stop! Wrong way! Dead end! Turn back now!’_ So it comes out like more of a squeak.

She shrugs. “’S okay, I guess. I don’t mind it.” _Well, everything about the way you’ve spoken up ’til now sure says you do._ She talks like she’s got daggers in her throat, and the daggers aren’t even hurting her—she’s just spitting them at you. She drips with casual, sarcastic energy. _Cool_.

“You’re Evan, yeah?” she says, and Evan jerks his head up.

“Ye. . . _es_.”

“’Kay, cool.” Her half-reach extends itself into a full arm’s length. “Thaila.”

“Thaila . . .” he repeats slowly, sounding it out.

“Yeah, that’s T-A-I-L-A.”

Sinking gut feeling comes kicking down the door again, but this time it’s not panic—just disappointment. His thoughts never leaked anywhere—for all anyone at this table knows, he knew her first name off by heart _and_ knew how to spell it _and_ knew how to pronounce it—so he’s just disappointed inwardly. At himself. A lot. Martin is too, but, screw it, he’s him.

“Oh,” he says. (“‘ _Oh_ ,’ indeed.” Martin.) Should he spell out his name, too? Like, she just did it. Would she feel insulted? She just did it. Screw it, he’s doing it. “I’m E-V-A—”

“I know how to spell Evan, okay? Thanks.”

 _C-r-a-p._ She’s insulted. Of course. For a second, he wonders if she also has to have three people in her brain, throwing Congress-style debates every time she goes to make one decision. _Probably not_. (That’s not something to lord over people, anyway. _“Oh, look at me, I’m so morally and intellectually superior because I’ve gone absolutely nuts!”_ Jesus Christ.)

“Sorry,” he says. She shrugs.

Then Peter lifts his head, and Evan notices for the first time that he’s got striking— _striking_? Wrong word—green eyes, and he looks like the campaign boy for _Kinder Chocolates_.

“My name’s Peter. P to the E to the T-E-R.”

Evan nods, and silently takes note of the fact Taila didn’t cut _him_ off. He really needs to learn how to assert dominance. (“Well, I guess it’s because Peter sounded cooler!” James says. _Thanks_. “We should come up with something like that for your name. _E to the V to the_ — No, that just falls flat.”)

Taila cranes her neck. “Is that the Spiderman crap everyone’s always scratching on the chairs?”

“Superman, but yeah.”

“Sorry—your name’s Peter, so my brain just went, _‘Zoop! Spiderman!’_ ”

“Yeah, I get that.”

Taila laughs and makes some passing comment about Mr. Stark and _Infinity War_ , and Peter says, “Oh, come _on_ ,” and turns his entire body to talk to her head-on. And, again, it’s like Evan’s vanished. Like someone took one of those huge erasers for Really Big Mistakes and put him out of his misery. It’s just as he’s always known it.

When he’s not speaking, he’s not really there at all.


	6. Evan Iston

Evan’s a piñata. The ride home is his _Sweet 16_. Every word that flies out of his mum’s mouth is a _whack-whack-whack_.

Evan’s mum presses once again for a minute-by-minute recount of her ‘little man’s big day’—like he would’ve cured cancer or gotten seven different STIs on the first day of middle school— and he keeps insisting, “It was good, Mum, it was great, the teachers are all very nice and the toilets are clean.” Except he doesn’t actually say that, he just says, “It was good,” and wrings his fingers and dumps his sweat glands all over the backseats while Cal talks on and on about Mr. Jones, the maths teacher, and how he writes everything in Impact, the font. It’s nice having Cal as an asset, because he remembers everything—or, even if he doesn’t, he just makes it up—and he saves Evan at least fifteen hundred words.

Evan’s not usually allowed to have people over on schooldays (that was never actually explicitly established, it kinda just established itself—Cal didn’t like coming over on schooldays, and Cal was the only one who ever, well, _came over_ ), but, under _The_ _Miracle of First Days_ , Cal’s here with him, sitting on the uncomfortable bump of a middle seat. People always make a huge deal out of first days—for reasons other than the overwhelming anxiety—because apparently they’re things you can “never get back.” But there’s a lot of things Evan can never get back—his Pokémon card collection, his Velcro shoes, his childhood—and he stopped making a big deal out of those two years ago.

Anyway, now Cal’s turned to him, saying, “He was a real banger, wasn’t he, Evan?” probably in an attempt to rein him back into the conversation. He’s 99% sure his parents have actually made Cal sign a formal, legally-binding document: _“We’ll let you talk for as much as you want, on the condition that our son participates in at least 0.0003% of the conversation.”_

Evan nods, realises his parents can’t see that, then says, “Yeah.”

Cal gives him a wry smile. Evan returns it, inverted; a wry frown, or whatever. _What did you_ want _me to do? Pledge my agreement in seventeen different languages? Jesus Christ._ He’s way too tired for a conversation. He hasn’t passed out in years, but the record’s very well close to collapsing right now. ( _Ba-dum-tssh_.)

“Right, well, Cal, sounds like you’ve had an action-packed day,” Evan’s dad says, airily. He curves his neck around the passenger seat. “Evan, how was yours?”

Evan bites back the “ _Good_ ,” hanging on his tongue, and instead says, “I can’t remember,” and his dad calls his bluff—“I’m calling your bluff”—even though it isn’t a bluff, it’s the honest truth, but that really just means, _“Try harder, idiot. I should’ve had a daughter,”_ in Dad-speak. So, sure, he tries harder: he remembers Dead Bowl Haircut, and he remembers Mr. Mallory, and he remembers his sandwich falling apart at lunch, and he remembers Cal having to give him half a granola bar instead. And he remembers talking to Taila.

“I, uh, spoke to a girl.”

His mum’s eyes go wide in the rear mirror and his dad’s neck cranes even harder around the passenger seat. (“You sound like such a virgin,” Martin says, and it’s probably because he _is_ a virgin. “Like, _woah_ , let me get you a prize. You spoke to a homo sapien with XX chromosomes. Well done.”)

“Woah!” his mum says, and her mouth forms a perfect ‘O,’ and his dad looks like he’s stubbed his toe.

“Woah! What’s this?”

Cal grins. “He did that! He really did!” he says, but his eyes say, “You _did_?”

Evan’s eyes say nothing, because they snap shut. He just leans back and stops talking. There’s no point. He’s beyond salvation. Everyone in this car thinks he’s just as much of a loser as he does.

 

As soon as they land in Iston residence, Cal makes a beeline for Evan’s room— _fwoop, fwoop, fwoop_ , go his socks against the wooden floor—and he doesn’t even stop to make a comment about “how much the place has changed since he was last here.” Evan trails behind him, half amused, half . . . well, probably tired. Yeah. Make that three-quarters tired, one-quarter amused.

Cal’s already sprawled over on the bed when he enters, “paint me like one of your French girls” style. He half expects Cal to make that reference; it wouldn’t be below him. 

“Ev _aaaaaa_ n,” he says instead, in this kind of tone Evan can’t even begin to describe. Flirty, if you were drunk out of your mind. A newborn fawn, trying to walk. Calvin Oliver, lying on his bed. (Is he blushing? Jesus Christ.) (“Jesus Christ, you’re blushing,” Damien says. “Shut _up_.”)

“C _al_. . .vin,” Evan returns, flat. A baby, dropped on its head.

“Join me,” Cal says. Evan’s room is about the size of a gorilla’s fist—“In no way would that be accurate,” says Martin—so he was planning to do so anyway, but Cal’s invitation makes him linger at the doorway just a bit longer.

“Evan,” Cal whines. “Don’t leave me hanging.” Wow. He loves feeling wanted. It’s crazy.

Evan rolls his eyes, but, yeah, he sits down beside his friend, hands balled into his lap. “You sound like a three-year-old.”

“Hmm! Don’t go making assumptions—not cool.” Cal grins. “I’m actually five.”

Evan’s legs form a wall around his backpack, and his toes start to toy around with it. “Sorry,” he says, pretty lamely. In an alternate universe, he and Cal would be batting off witty remarks like tennis balls, and he’d be fun and interesting to talk to, and he’d make _Cal_ laugh more than Cal made _him_ laugh. But, realistically, he’d lose his racket before the match even starts.

“This place hasn’t changed a bit,” Cal says, like a long-lost aunt, even though the last time he visited was just a few days ago. “Nostalgic.”

There’s actually nothing nostalgic about it. Evan’s room has probably changed more than _he_ has his entire life. Like, for one, the walls were recently re-painted, and he got a new office chair, and he got himself a _My Chemical Romance_ poster even though Damien kept telling him how disrespectful that was to the dead. And, also, he threw out his old Spiderman bedsheet a week ago, and now he’s using his mum’s floral one.

With the amount of superhero merch he has, he must be some crazed fanatic, but it’s actually nothing like that at all. He just feels like he has an obligation to love Marvel—and DC, probably—you know? Most of the heroes creep him out. Like, shooting webs from your fingers? If he had that ability, he’d probably lose 3 pounds from tears alone. (And, besides, he gets the flu every season; there’s no way he would’ve survived the bite.)

But that’s just a thing Cal says. He’s like a robot, sometimes; programmed only with certain phrases for certain situations. ( _location.room_evan(); true._ ) He’s like a charming, witty robot.

Evan laughs, belatedly. Christ, he can just get so caught up in his own mind he forgets to function like a normal human being. And Cal smiles. (A smiling robot, too.)

“Why—um . . .” Evan places his hands square on his backpack. “Why’d you come over today?”

“First day.” Cal does half a jazz hand (he kinda just wiggles his fingers a little). Evan groans semi-involuntarily. _First day crap_. He’s so sick of this.

Cal shrugs, and nuzzles his back into the bedframe. “Well,” he’s saying, “I guess I kinda just wanted to talk for a bit, and, well, you know, we’re here, anyway. You mind?”

“No, umm, sure, go ahead.”

“Cool.” He puts a thumb up, sits up a bit straighter, and gets this glint in his eyes that makes Evan’s heart twist just the tiniest bit.

“Dude, I think I might’ve just met the coolest human being, ever, today,” Cal says, which makes Evan’s heart twist just a lot. “I say this all the time and you might be thinking, _why is it even a competition anymore_ —but I just felt like we _clicked_. GOD. She was so COOL . . .” Cal’s voice drones on and on, and Evan doesn’t like to zone out when anyone’s talking—much less Cal—but he’s just so _tired_. And irritated. He can’t remember the last time he’s felt so annoyed by anything Cal’s said, but here we are, his friend’s rambling about a girl he met—“Next time I see her, I just might scream.”—and Evan just. Can’t. Relate.

Sometimes, he likes to think he has a chance, but then he has to sit through this, and he gets reminded that Cal’s just. So. Straight.

 

If you asked Evan _why_ he liked Cal—well, he’d probably run away. He’d maybe bluster a few excuses—“Umm, I, well, I don’t _know_ what you’re talking . . . _about_ ”—but, ultimately, he’d run away.

If you trapped him in a cage, ripped off his kneecaps, and held him at gunpoint, he’d probably say, “I still don’t know what you’re talking about, please let me go,” because what’s a gay if not stubborn.

Evan can’t really explain what he likes about Cal, to be perfectly honest. Does Evan like how he looks? His golden curls? (See how cringeworthy that was? That’s how far he’s fallen. He’s at the lowest of the low. He’s describing his best friend like he’s the heroine of a slow-burn fanfiction.)

Does Evan like how he growls when he’s upset? (It’s hot. It’s really hot—he’s in this far, he might as well admit it.)

Does Evan like how he smiles? Honestly, if Evan were blind, he’d still be able to see Cal’s smiles. They’re so bright. And handsome. (Evan always feels so dirty using the word handsome—he’s still not really used to this gay thing.)

He figured it out around October last year—Year 6 was probably the gayest year he’s ever experienced—or, more precisely, the Halloween Disco. And that sounds so stereotypical—like, if he were sitting at an _Ellen_ interview and he was all, “Oh, I found the love of my life at the prom!” they’d kick him off the stage so fast he’d need reconstructive surgery. The Discos were the make it or break it for junior couples. But they were all straight. That’s the thing.

This was a big deal for Evan, and he’s gonna wallow in it. He’d just found out the tingly feeling in his stomach whenever Cal grabbed his hand wasn’t just mutual, heterosexual friendship—it was pining. It was super hard pining. It was ‘ _I don’t know if I want to pin_ you _to the wall or if I want_ you _to pin_ me _to the wall_ ’.  

Anyway, Cal was down on popularity—somehow—and he showed up one night in his pyjamas and casually asked Evan out. It wasn’t really _asking him out_ , it was more, “The girls all think I’m gross. You’re my best friend,” but Evan likes to think of it as the humble beginnings of a great romance. And, besides, Cal even cleaned it up with, “I don’t think I could go with anyone but you, anyway,” and that shot Evan so high, he met the aliens.

He can’t remember the exact moment it all fell on him, but he knows that the Disco left him blushing so hard, he’s surprised there was even any blood left to go around. And that’s probably when he knew. When he knew he was practically setting himself up for disaster. When he stuck his foot in the shark-tank, except that the shark-tank was a young, blonde boy so beautiful, he couldn’t possibly be real. He was just so beautiful. And so straight.

It’s not that unbearable most of the time; it’s not like Cal goes around making out with hot chicks in front of Evan’s dead, flayed corpse. And sometimes, Cal even lets him dream. Sometimes, Cal says something very remotely gay—Cal called him “babe” once, and his brain overdosed on dopamine—and holds his hand like maybe, just _maybe_ , in some far away universe, he’s got a crush on Evan, too.

And other times, he talks on and on about a girl he’s met. A day ago. And he shrinks up Evan’s stupid little crush like a Coke can under his shoe.

 

Back in the real world, Cal’s stopped talking, and he’s staring at Evan like he’s the last thing on Earth. (Wishful thinking. He probably just asked a question, and Evan hasn’t responded.)

“You’re not listening, are you?” he says.

“Ah . . .”

“It’s fine.” Cal waves a hand. “I probably sounded pretty stupid.”

“No, umm . . .” _Yeah, you did,_ but he’d never say that. “Not really.”

Cal shrugs. “How about you? Did you meet anyone, like, remotely cool? Middle school’s not the biggest sea, but, you know, reel in what you can.”

Evan stares down at his bag. “You’re probably the coolest person I know.” Martin gives him a ghost-y high-five for that— _“Smoothest thing you’ll ever say.”_

“Huh. Thanks.” And Cal _smiles_. Aa _aa_ gh. Evan’s going to rip his head off. He’s way too tired for this. (It’s not _cute_. Cal isn’t _cute_. He’s hot.)

(Sometimes, he’s glad he’s got no chance. That way he’ll never have to say any of this out loud, and he’ll just tuck it in his head, zip it up, and lock it away.)

“Hey, Evan,” Cal says, somewhat suddenly, “do you like people? At all? Or am I one of the lucky ones?”

Evan snorts. ‘Lucky ones’—like Evan’s opinion could ever be that important.

“I do like people,” Evan says, and he doesn’t elaborate. It’s hard to elaborate; he stopped trying to a few years back. He’d load up a few sentences, then he’d open his goddamn mouth, and it’d all tumble out in broken chunks—like crushed ice being scooped off the roof—and he’d sound even more stupid than he did before.

Evan _does_ like people; he just likes them from afar. Like a painting he doesn’t want to touch, in case he ruins it, or in case it doesn’t like him—which is where the analogy falls flat. He’s not a misanthrope, or anything like that. People are fascinating, really; it’s amazing to just imagine how much goes _in_ to a person. He remembers wanting to be a psychologist, once—before he realised he was absolutely useless with words.

He observes, he doesn’t interact, and that’s probably for the best.

He doesn’t catch Cal’s answer, because he’s too caught up in his mind. Again. Cal stands up.

“You think I should stay for dinner?”

“Do you _want_ to?”

“Do _you_ want me to?”

Yes. _God_ , yes. Evan laughs incredulously. “I don’t know,” he says instead, lamely, disgustingly, horribly.

Cal puts a hand to his chin, philosopher style, scrunches up his nose—then loads up the intro to “Should I Stay or Should I Go” by The Clash, and, honestly, Evan should’ve seen that one coming.

_“Darlin’, you gotta let me know, should I stay or should I go?”_

Evan’s universal role as the cynical straight-man—side note: ha _ha_ —is screaming at him, “Tell Cal to shut up, _god_ , tell Cal to shut up,” but he’s too busy going beet red, because Damien of all people is saying, “Jesus, I love this guy. Can we marry him? Can we marry him, like, right now?”

Then Cal gets to the line: _“You’re happy when I’m on my knees,”_ and Evan feels like he’s about to explode. That’s such a horrible goddamn mental image. His brain is whirring. Cal on his—

Shut up. You know what? It’s time to stop.

Evan doesn’t know _where_ James is right now, but he needs him back. Maybe James died of blood loss, and he’ll never see him again, and he’ll be stuck with stuck-up Martin and mid-proposal Damien forever.

 _“Should I stay or should I go now?”_ Cal’s holding some sort of makeshift-mic, but he drops it in favour of Evan’s hand. (Side note: ha _HA_.) His striking— _striking_? Wrong word—eyes pierce into Evan’s dull, brown ones. “Should I stay or should I go now?”

See, it’s here where Evan’s supposed to roll his eyes and say something to shut down whatever craze Cal’s cruising through right now, but the very problem with that is that Evan’s brain isn’t working. His brain just isn’t responding to any stimulus—except for the fact that Cal’s holding his hand. And it’s flicking the lights on and off, screaming, “WELCOME TO HELL! WELCOME TO HELL!”

Ugh. He’s in love with a goddamn cliché. He’s already there.

Apparently, someone up in mission control had enough sense to redirect his eyes somewhere else, except that now they’re staring down at his hands. His hands that are currently intertwined with Cal’s. _Ugh_. Why are straight people like this.

“Ohhhh, admiring my nails, are we?” Cal croons. “They’re organic. And bitten.”

Evan goes beet red for the seventy millionth time. Sure, Cal may bite his nails, but they’re still— _h-o-t_. Evan bites his nails, too, anyway; he painted them bright red last year, to, like, maybe stop it, but—as it turns out—aesthetic just isn’t enough to beat seven years’ worth of bad habits.

And anyway anyway, Evan wasn’t even looking at Cal’s nails, he was just being gay. But, you know: nails. Hot, bitten nails.

 _“Well, come on and let me know,”_ Cal goes, again, _“should I stay or should I go?”_

You know, Cal’s singing voice is also kinda—

You know what? If Evan’s looking to shut down this hormone fest any time soon, he’s going to need to stop acknowledging every time Cal does something even remotely hot. He just needs to stop. Period.

Evan shrugs—you know, like a loser.

“I mean, I don’t know.”

“Evan.” Cal drops his hands. _Thank God_. “I serenaded you for two minutes. Could you give me a more passionate answer.”

“PASSIONATE?!” Damien screams. “The fuck does this bitch mean ‘PASSIONATE’?! Kiss him right on the fucking lips and see how he fucking likes that, _EVAN_!”

 _NO!_ Evan’s gone so hot, it’s almost unbearable. His stupid gay crush + the scorching summer sun? Evan’s going to die in a matter of minutes.

“He’s just teasing you, Damien,” Martin says. “We’ve been through this before—honestly, I don’t know what is _up_ with you, today.”

“What is _up_ with me? What is _FUCKING_ up with me? Martin, does your dumb _fucking_ ass realise that our crush—of five _fucking_ years—has literally committed the height of heterosexual crime today?”

“I’m not even going to _pretend_ to be interested.”

“Dude, are you there?” Cal says, waving a hand. “Woah, you’ve been _out_ , like, all day. What is up with you, man?” (Side note: _H A  H A._ ) Evan just blinks.

“No, yeah, I’m, umm . . . I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Cal grins. “Do you need another song? ’Cause I can load up the queue.” And when Evan doesn’t reply, something in his expression gets a bit softer. “Dude, if you’re tired, that’s okay. You can just tell me to leave. Okay? Today was a huge—and great!—day for you already.”

Okay. That’s it. Evan’s going to cry, right here, right now. Calvin Oliver is a god. There’s no doubt about it.

Cal pats his back, and, yeah, sure enough—he’s crying, right here, on a Tuesday afternoon, on the first day of middle school, because he loves his straight friend so much and they’ll never even date, like, ever. (That’s not why he’s upset, right? That can’t be it.)

“I’m sorry,” he says, between a hiccup or two. He’s such a pathetic little wuss. A crybaby. Jesus, he’s such a crybaby.

“For what? For crying? That’s such bullshit.” Cal keeps patting his back. Evan cries even harder, now for probably no reason. His mind’s just blank—or so full, he can’t focus on a thing. Except that his best friend and/or horrible crush is holding him, and that it feels way, way too real.


	7. Evan Iston

So. Cal didn’t stay for dinner.

And Evan doesn’t see him anywhere around the gates on Wednesday, so, when his mum’s Volvo pulls up in front of the school, he starts drafting a text to Cal. Mentally. Like, it’s funny—you’d think, after being friends for seven years, he’d have gotten over first text anxiety, but apparently not so. (You’d think, after being alive for twelve years, he’d have gotten over _anxiety_ —in general—but, alas.)

He types out, _“Where are we meeting today?”_ then types out, _“where are we meeting today?”_ then erases the entire sentence because it sounds too eerily similar to The Coffee Club slogan. Then he just types, _“classroom?”_ and shuts his eyes, hits send, and hopes it doesn’t sound too . . . _ominous_. Like, imagine it: _you’re Calvin Oliver—blonde, beautiful, amazing, confident—and you’re confidently sitting on, like, a bench or something, and all of a sudden your phone buzzes and it’s from your godawful childhood friend and it just says, “_ classroom? _” and nothing else. No context. You burn your phone and you change your name and you fly out of the country._ It’ll be Evan’s new short film—“How I Lost My Best Friend,” visuals provided by Martin.

Before he can provide any kind of context, his phone buzzes.

**“hey. hey listen. hey what the fuck.”**

Evan chokes, or he feels like he’s choking. His fingers fly across the keyboard faster than he can control them and he chokes out, _“WHERE ARE WE MEETING,”_ except with probably more typos.

And Cal sends back, _“CLASSROOM?”_ and Evan’s pretty sure he laughs out loud. Which is just fantastic. See, in an alternate universe, if he were a straight girl, he’d send back, _“LOL”_ complete with his own legion of laughing-crying emojis—but he’s not, so he opens up the message, leaves it on Read, and trudges his way to class with just the smallest feeling of assholery.

He was right, yesterday. His classroom’s the only place he knows how to get to. (Mentor classroom. There’s more than one classroom now—he keeps forgetting that.) If he just stripped off his dignity and he stripped down to his shorts, he’d probably be able to piss in the bush. Like a raccoon. A teacher walks out for a breath of fresh air and—BAM! It’s Evan! Pissing in the bush.

Yeah, that’s not happening.

Realistically, he could ask a teacher, or a classmate, or Cal. (Damien’s laughing. “‘Realistically,’” he says. “That’s real funny.”) But, anyway, James is back, and he’s pointing out all the perfectly irrelevant details about Bayshore and holding them close to his chest.

“Flowers!” he’s saying. “Green-brownish leaves! A painting tilted at exactly 60 degrees!”

_What are you doing?_

“Bringing you down to Earth!” says James, smiling. “You’re not getting all lost in your head today!”

“Are you an actual brainlet?” says Martin. “You do realise that _you’re_ in his head, right?”

“Y-Yeah . . . but I’m his helpful head.” James shakes his head. “I’m in his helpful head.”

Damien squints, but doesn’t comment.

Evan hops down step by step, notes the trees somewhat unwillingly, turns the corner, then sees his classroom—and more notably, the snaking line of kids streaming out like ants. His mentor is 7H.03, but the _classroom_ is M15, which everyone in his head thinks is pretty, uh, stupid.

He cranes his neck for any sight of Cal’s blonde tuft . . . and, pending request . . . _Aha!_ There he is, sitting three people away from the door. Evan reaches for his phone, feeling just a bit like a creep.

“Hey, Cal!” someone else says. Evan’s hands droop to his side. A boy waves, then sits down beside Cal. “Did you TiVo _The Bachelor_ last night?” The kid’s got brown hair—slicked back.

(“Receding hairline,” Damien says.)

(“You clearly don’t know what a receding hairline is,” Martin says.)

“Who owns a TiVo?” Cal says.

“I do. I have three. What, you want one?”

“Nah, I’ll pass.”

The boy gestures with his hands, sculling-style. “So?”

“No-go on _The Bachelor_ -show,” Cal says.

“ _Dude_. They made out.” God, it’s so _straight_. Evan’s a loser and irrefutably gay, but he cranes his neck a little further. _Who?_ (“You’re such a loser,” Martin says.)

“Who?” Cal says.

“That’d be a spoiler.”

Cal rolls his eyes. “You can’t just say ‘They made out,’ and leave me hanging.”

“Watch the show, Calvin.” The boy shrugs. “Watch the show.”

And this is when Evan retreats. Unbelievable. _Un-be-lie-va-ble_. They just had a whole, smooth _conversation_ , and they met a _day_ ago. Which is just. So. Goddamn. Amazing. Evan doesn’t even know who this kid is, but at this rate, it’s probably fair to assume Cal’s got three hundred friends and they’ve all got matching wristbands and they’ve all added each other on Snapchat. Evan doesn’t even _have_ Snapchat.

Like, he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get how this works. It’s like there’s a Casual gene, and he’s missing it. Like one day God gave out goody bags with all the basic human functions, and Evan missed out because he was too busy having a panic attack in the bathroom.

Today’s just been so absolutely wonderful already. Next, Dead Bowl Haircut’s gonna show up and he’ll probably _throw_ up.

“Mosaic,” James says, softly, quietly, probably doing that grounding crap again. “Mosaic. It’s a squirrel. On the wall. It’s cute.”

_Shut up._

He sits down at the very end of the bench, hands stuffed in his pockets—because he’s practically just _asking_ to be called a huge goddamn loser—and he finds himself doing what he does best: people-watching. It’s kinda like bird-watching, but creepier—and a lot more fun. (There’s a kid gelling his hair back with his own spit.) So, Evan sits there and he starts to wonder: what kind of people are in his classes? Would they be nice? Would they be cool? Would they like him? There’s a girl with bangs she keeps trying to pull down her face, and she looks like a walking, talking MCR poster. Just wristbands and tears. God, he hopes the “Evanescence” joke doesn’t paint him like that.

God, he’d almost forgotten about that one.

It was almost funny. “Evan” isn’t usually nicknamed. Like, there’s “Dick,” and “Analie,” and “Virginia”—and they’re all sex jokes. He’s probably supposed to feel honoured someone could even dig a joke out of something as sexually dry as “Evan,” but he’s not. He’s just wondering how long it’s going to stick, or if everyone’s already forgotten about it and he’s obsessing over nothing. Or if no one’s forgotten, at all, and the moment he steps inside, Cal’s going to whip out his air guitar and the whole class is going to explode into a frenzy of “Bring Me To Life.” It’s almost funny.

A girl sits down next to him, which is funny enough, because who’s Evan if not a chick magnet. He looks up—no, no, he doesn’t. He kinda just side-eyes her. It’s Dead Bowl Haircut. Amazing how much the universe wants him to wrench off his kneecaps.

She flattens herself against the brick wall, then looks down at her feet, and Evan’s not a master at anything, but after twelve anxious, anxious years, he can sense some slight hints of nervous energy coming from this girl. It’s like a radar. An Anxiety Radar. Something he definitely, definitely doesn’t want to make his own.

Evan knows other people get anxious, too, but it’s always so hard to believe. Other people just look like they’ve got it together—maybe that’s the key. With Dead Bowl Haircut and her checkered shoes, it just looks like it all fits together. She’s got a few of his nervous ticks—the hand-wringing, that’s a classic—but she looks _cool_ enough about it. And everything just seems to tell Evan that he looks like he’s been pulled out of a storm drain, always. 

( _“Don’t compare yourself to others!”_ —a note his mum left on his bedside table this morning. Not the easiest thing in the world. How can he not compare himself to others when they’re right there, waiting to be compared to? Sometimes it’s like people are walking around, with their free smiles and easy conversations and checkered shoes, with signs floating above their heads: _“My voice sounds better than Evan’s,”_ or _“My shoes look cooler than Evan’s,”_ or _“My friends like me better than Evan’s.”_ )

Maybe it’s a matter of thinking. Thinking that maybe people aren’t that different from him. Thinking that maybe people feel the same way he does. But, looking at Dead Bowl Haircut, it’s hard to believe they’re one and the same.

And when she opens her mouth and talks to him, it’s even harder to believe.

“Hey, what do Alexander Hamilton and Amazon Alexa have in common?” she says.

Evan flinches, and, against all good instinct, he says, “What?” ignoring the churning of his godawful stomach.

“Their names both come from ‘Alex’!” She holds out a hand, and Evan looks up at her like she’s the first human being he’s ever seen. “Hi! I’m Alex.”

“ _Evan_ ,” he croaks out, and then he dies, seventeen times over. Every muscle in his hand beats the ever-loving hell out of him before he manages to hold it out, then reel it back in anyway, because he decides he doesn’t really want to touch her hand—or, more specifically, he doesn’t want her to touch _his_ hand, because it’s sweaty and feels like a swamp in the summer. “Iston,” he says, instinctively, even though he’s told himself so many goddamn times that he needs to stop doing that. (It’s not like telling himself to do something ever works, anyway. He just thought it’d be easy enough to stop tacking his last name onto everything he says like it’s some kind of signature.)

“Oh! Adams,” says Alex. “My last name.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to . . .” Evan tries saying, but nothing actually comes out of his mouth because his body actually does not function at all. And then someone else says, “It’s an Oliver over here,” and it’s Cal. And he’s slid up real close to Evan, because straight people just love to do that.

Alex smiles. “Hello, O’llo,” she says, and Cal laughs, and Evan laughs, too, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone’s making a joke, even if he doesn’t really get it.

“Alex, right? You’re Alex?” asks Cal. “Alexandra? Alexand _er_?”

“Literally just Alex.”

“Well, hey, Just Alex,” he holds out his hand, “I’m Cal.”

Alex takes his hand and she shakes her head: “Shut _up_.”

And all of a sudden Evan feels like a tribe master, watching the enemy take unannounced base on his land. And he wants nothing more than to rip off his shirt and pound loud fists on his chest and declare war.

But he doesn’t, he leans back against the wall and thinks of all the things he could be saying—maybe some zingers, maybe some banter, who knows!—but isn’t, because he’s too scared. Scared of what? Christ, what isn’t there to be scared of? Maybe they’re having a great, invigorating conversation and then Evan and his dumb squeaky rat voice butts in and they both look at each other like, “Great, here’s this idiot again,” and, because they’re all good people, they let him join in and he’ll never know if he’s pissing them off or not.

When he was younger, Evan used to do that a lot—butt into conversations—and people would always give him these looks he couldn’t really understand. He used to think they meant, _“Woah, this dude is so cool! He’s got so much to say!”_ but they actually meant, _“God, this guy is so annoying, but it’s not like he’s gonna know that until I tell my friends about it when I think he isn’t listening.”_

Sometimes he wishes there wasn’t all that behind-your-back crap. He wishes they’d just tell him to his face, “You’re being a nuisance. Go away,” and at least then he won’t have to keep wondering whether or not they want to impale him with a long stick. That’s the thing. Talking to people is this huge guessing game. “Maybe they hate you, but maybe they don’t,” his brain tells him, and he tells it, “Can’t you just tell me which one it is?” and it tells him, again, “Maybe they hate you, but maybe they don’t.”

It’s a scary thought, being hated. It’s scary to think that just your existence can make someone so angry.

Evan can’t talk to people if he thinks they hate him, and he’s sure everyone hates him. And why wouldn’t they, anyway? He’s impossible. Being friends with Evan is like being friends with a snail. (At least a snail’s good for the environment.)

He checks his watch. 8:49. A casual reminder that he has to do another six hours of this, for seven days a week, for ten weeks a term, for four terms a year, for seven years a career—for forever years a lifetime. And what’s going to happen along the way? Maybe he’ll settle down with a loving family. Maybe everyone will forget about him. Maybe he’ll be stuck in college for six years. Maybe he’ll even go homeless!

When you think of it like that, it’s kinda like drowning and never dying. (And he stole that one from a Tumblr blog.)

Evan feels like he’s melting into the ground again, which is a great feeling to have on the second freaking day of middle school. Damien’s telling him he’d rather be eating a rat’s ass than being here, stuck inside Evan’s head, and—honestly? Vice versa.

The door swings—no, it doesn’t swing—open, and the Year 7 Centipede starts to filter inside, and Evan half expects Cal to tap him on the arm and say, “Wake up, Evan, it’s time to go-go,” but he doesn’t. He’s still talking to Alex. And, sure, Alex is cool—and Evan’s not pissed, he’s not pissed at all. Why would he be pissed? Alex is super cool. Of course Cal would want to talk to her, and not Evan. But, you know: sometimes he wishes Cal had that 0.0003% agreement with everyone else, too.

“You know what?” James says, placing a ghostly hand on Evan’s shoulder. “Hatred is overrated. Let’s focus on her positive traits! Like, umm . . . she’s cute!”

“Really? She’s _cute_?” Damien spits. “I’m _gay_ , James.”

“Cute platonically! She’s got a cute personality.”

“Shut up.”

“Well, I suppose she seems fun,” Martin says, surprisingly enough. “Perhaps it would be beneficial to become acquaintances.”

 “Can you stop talking like you’re twenty-three?” James. “But, yeah! She looks super fun! You, Cal, Alex—the power . . . group!”

“Power duo,” Damien says, “you were totally gonna say power duo. And you know what a duo means? Two. Two people. Cal. Alex. And—” he places a stupid hand on his heart, “ _oh no_ —no Evan.”

Evan hauls his bag over his shoulder. _Fair enough_.

“No! Not fair enough! You deserve the world, Evan! I totally meant power group! It’s a new fad!”

“It’s not,” Martin confirms. Evan shakes his head. He should conduct a study: _How Hard Does James Have To Try Before He Just Becomes A Huge Loser?_ (In the background, James says _something, something, something_ —Evan’s stopped listening.)

He decides to tune himself to Cal’s radio station—“So, that’s why my left kneecap looks like a burnt chicken nugget.”—and, slowly, he eases back into the uneasiness of first weeks.


	8. Evan Iston

At recess, Cal spots them a tiny bench near canteen outskirts. He sits down, dangling a potato gem around. (A potato gem is kinda like a bite-sized hash brown. The naming pisses Martin off to no end.)

“So,” he says, “about that hill thing, right?”

Evan swallows. “What hill thing?” _That_ hill thing?

“The thing on Sunday. You know, when you rang me up at six to go stargazing?”

 _That_ hill thing. Just when you think you can’t get any lower, you make a wish about getting with your best friend and/or crush right in front of aforementioned best friend and/or crush. And then you’re at Evan’s level. Seven feet underground.

Honestly, Evan doesn’t even know what he expected. What, that Cal would see something different in Evan’s sun-lit face? That Cal would see Evan staring off into the sky wistfully, curls brushed by the wind, talking about that stupid hill rumour, and suddenly fall in love? That the sun’s dying rays would frame the beginnings of their romance? That Cal would grab his face and they’d passionately make out?

To be completely honest, that’s probably it.

Evan swallows again.

“What about it?” he says.

“Is it, like, any kind of wish?” Cal drops a potato gem into his mouth. (His mum gave him five bucks, and he’s been floating all day.) “Can I wish for a Lamborghini?”

“You don’t want a Lamborghini.”

“ _I_ don’t, but my teenage heart does.” Another gem. He chews this one for a bit, then places a hand on his chin. “Are there any more terms of agreement? Is there a ritual? Fireworks? Do you just wish for the same thing every week, for fifty-one weeks? What if you miss a week? If you start wishing for something else, do you start again, or does God give you a diligence pass?”

“That’s, umm . . .” Evan moves his left hand to his neck, because otherwise it’d be playing with his zipper. “That’s a lot of questions. One at a time, please.”

“Right, sorry.” Cal clears his throat. “Question one—may you choose to accept it—terms of agreement?”

“Well, uh . . .” It’s an urban legend. Apparently, it spread like wildfire during the 90’s. Evan found the rumour on 4chan, in a forum for Action Replay codes. So, he’s not all that clear on the rules. (“Rule one, probably,” Martin says, “is to be horribly fucking desperate.”)

“It’s more of a, umm . . . whatever goes? I guess.”

Cal looks a bit dubious, and it’s funny that this is the thing he’s dubious about, and not the whole fifty-one weeks crap. That’s almost a whole year. That gives him a six-year long crush on his best friend. Doesn’t that just make you want to bury yourself in the ground.

“Isn’t there, like, an official rulebook?”

“Why are you so interested?” Evan says, not thinking about how incredibly rude it sounds until it’s left his stupid mouth. God, he doesn’t even understand why simple curiosity always sounds so wrong.

“Hmm,” Cal hmm’s. “I guess it’s kinda cool that you’re excited about something. That doesn’t usually happen, does it?”

Evan feels his entire face flushing. Does he look _excited_? Worse yet, does he look _overeager_? God, did he ring up Cal at six on a Sunday, _bursting at the seams_? Just to drag him off to _Birchville Hill_? Please. No. He feels ill.

“It’s not a bad thing!” Cal says, suddenly, squeezing Evan’s hands. “It’s cool! It’s neat you’re fired up! I wanna douse myself in your gasoline!”

Evan’s will to live disappeared five minutes ago. “What does that even mean?”

“I wanna be into the things you are. I wanna share your enthusiasm.” Cal smiles, sexil—

Cal smiles. Period.

 _‘Share your enthusiasm.’_ Well, isn’t that just so goddamn awesome. Now Evan has to say, “That’s great! You can join me, having a huge gay crush on you!” His will to live has officially left the building.

“Well, you know, umm . . .” Evan’s hands are fiddling with his zipper again. _Goddammit_. “I guess it’s just more of a token.”

“A token? Of what? For what?”

“Of luck. For . . . umm, my wish.”

Cal nods. “Mhm. And—right—does any wish go? Is it whatever goes?”

 _“Your love will be reciprocated.”_ The rumour spit those exact, ungodly words. Made Evan’s heart skip a full beat. Christ, he’s in deep.

For a second, Evan just considers lying: _“Yeah, definitely.”_ Easy. He could move on with his life, and Cal would probably forget about it in a few days, anyway, and his stupid rumour and his stupid crush would just leave the way it came. Stupid.

And then the “dude, you’re gay” side of him—Damien—drop-kicks him to the curb and screams, “Come on! Just a little clue! He won’t even piece it together, probably, AND you’ll sleep easy tonight!” And, honestly, positive reinforcement from Damien is almost as rare as Cal being gay.

So Evan astral projects to Mars and says, “It’s, uh, more of a—umm—love thing.”

Cal cocks an eyebrow. “Love?”

WHOO! That gets Evan giddy. Way too giddy. Now all he’s gotta do is snip together “I,” “you,” and “Evan,” and he’s got “I love you, Evan”! He’s definitely committing this to long-term memory.

You know, if he were in a chick flick, he could totally grab Cal’s cheeks and whisper, “It’s you. It’s always been you,” and then they’d make out and get married and adopt some seven children and grow old and die together. But he’s not, he’s in Bayshore, where he’d probably rather gorge out his kneecaps with a rusty spoon than ever let this beast run free.

And now Cal’s talking about how much he wants a pet frog, so the topic’s done and dusted—and what do you know—Evan’s probably bombed another chance to confess. Life keeps spoon-feeding these to him, and he keeps coughing them back up. Martin’s done case studies on all of them:

 

**Situation 1**

It’s Year 4, and Cal comes over for a sleepover. You share a bed. Your feet are touching. You’re sweating. A lot.

Right response: “Cal . . . you’re so warm. Will you marry me?”

Wrong response: “Sorry, I really need to pee. I’ll just go sleep on the couch.”

(Martin’s note: You slept on the goddamn couch.)

 

**Situation 2**

It’s Year 5, and you’re at swim practice. It’s Pyjama Fun Day, and you’ve forgotten how to do literally anything in the water. You’re practically drowning. Cal grabs you by the pyjama leg and pulls you to safety.

Right response: “Cal . . . you saved my life. Will you marry me?”

Wrong response: “HACK. COUGH. SPLUTTER.”

(Martin’s note: You spat water in his goddamn face.)

 

**Situation 3**

It’s the summer of Year 6, and Cal gives you this heart-shaped card. It says, “I love you (no homo) (but no hetero either).”

Right response: “Cal . . . will you marry me?”

Wrong response: “. . .”

(Martin’s note: Gay silence.)

 

If he may be his own defence attorney: Years 4-5, Evan spent as an unknown gay, and only in Year 6 did he officially become a total spineless loser. See, you might be under the impression, “Well, if he gave you that card, he obviously likes you, dude,” but the thing with Cal is that it’s absolutely _impossible_ to take _any_ kind of social cues from him. It’s like Cal doesn’t even know what social cues are. On the sixth of June, 2016, he bought a Ring-Pop from down the street and proposed to everyone in class. So, make of that what you will.

Evan doesn’t have hope, not really. It’s not like he expects to . . . _go_ anywhere from here. All he’s riding on is that maybe it’ll all just go away someday. That maybe one day he’ll just wake up and realise he’s not actually gay and that he actually has a crush on the girl next door.

Meanwhile, Cal waves him back to Period 2, and Evan’s smiling before he even knows it.

So far, so bad.


	9. Calvin Oliver

It’s the age-old question: is it right to say you enjoy school, or is it just a front for the bad karma coming to beat you over the head? Right now, Cal’s on the fence.

His track record is, like, six to one: six being the Bad Decisions and one being the Not As Bad But Still Ultimately Bad Decisions. Cal’s legacy:

  * **Year 3:** Set fire to the faculty toaster.
  * **Year 4:** Faked a grass allergy and three doctor’s notes.
  * **Year 5:** Nothing big. Broke one (1) vase.
  * **Year 6:** Stole four fire extinguishers to propel his rolling chair down the hill. That one’s a classic. (Also, week’s detention.)



And now, he’s wondering how he’s gonna Fuck Up next. Quick inspection of the classroom, and everything looks like a target. Tables? Throwing. Windows? Smashing. Posters? Ripping. Whiteboard? Well, that’s a free-for-all. (He shouldn’t even be thinking about this.) (But it’s so _easy_.) (And it’s so _hard_ not to.)

It’s pretty much prime time for daydreaming during first week. Which is why it’s also prime time for the _Cal Fucks Up Show_ , from nine to three, Monday to Friday. It’s like his brain isn’t even there for the first, like, 30 hours of the term. It’s sipping Blue Gatorade by the beach, leaving—what, his arms?—on autopilot. The program goes: he strays, then he needs to reel himself back in. Rinse and repeat.

And now he’s on a government/self-assigned Not Fucking Up policy. The universe is sick of his shit, and, you know what? So is he. He’s gonna keep himself occupied with schoolwork. He’s gonna make himself a lackey-band ball, he’s gonna do some meditation, buy some scented candles—gonna definitely keep his mind away from hijacking the P.A., or starting a Doomsday call, or just, like, Fucking Up, you know? Definitely. He’s not even thinking about it. Not even the tiniest bit.

To prove it? Cal starts crafting and running through lists in his head. It’s probably the closest to Organised he’ll ever get. Like sifting through an endless sea of trash, just to find one or two intelligible words. Like, ‘intelligible.’

 

**Sir Calvin the Fifth’s list of favourite subjects:**

  1. Media
  2. . . .
  3. Media
  4. It’s just media



 

**Calvis Olivis’ list of favourite teachers:**

  1. Mallory – He’s actually really nice and his head is really shiny . . . I love him.
  2. Jones – He’s a mess. I love him.
  3. Miss Cambridge – She’s got three rainbow pins on her jacket and they’re really cute! :D (Also, she wears a jacket in the summer.) I love her.
  4. Williams – She calls me Calvin because she doesn’t believe in nicknames. I love her.



 

Time for a commercial break!

Alex has passed him a note. Knew she was that kind of person.

He unfolds it—slow, deliberate—loud enough for her to hear, quiet enough to stay undetected, then straightens it out on his desk. There’s a small sentence, written in Alex’s small handwriting with her small i’s and curly g’s: _“gah . . . i’m so sleepy. i wanna become a cat.”_ And then she’s drawn some kind of abomination with three eyes and one leg. He can’t help laughing. _God, is that cute? Can I say that’s cute?_

Yeah. Yeah, it’s cute how bad it is.

 _“is that cat alex? is that your catsona?”_ he writes back, eyeing Mr. Jones for an opportunity and then awkwardly slipping it down the back of her chair.

A few beats pass and she eventually responds, _“are you calling me a furry? a fucking furry?”_ and their notes pile up into a small conversation:

Cal: _“yeah. maybe i am.”_

Alex: _“well. her name is alexa, actually, and she can shit lasers.”_

Cal: _“that’s hot.”_

Alex: _“please don’t say that.”_

Alex’s notes get shorter and shorter and more and more cryptic by the two-minute. She sends one almost—no, actually periodically: every now and then Kevin taps her desk and whispers, “Two minutes,” and Alex passes back a badly torn parchment of Maths Book. It’d almost feel like he’s on a quest, if one of the notes didn’t just say: “ _H_ ,” and nothing else.

To be honest, she’s got no style, but she’s got good timing. Her techniques include:

  * reach blindly behind chair, drop note and hope it lands on Cal’s desk;
  * pretend to stretch and hope Cal takes the note;
  * ditch note at Cal’s head;
  * throw note on the floor and tell Cal he dropped something;
  * leave desk to pretend-throw something in the bin but instead bury note in Cal’s pencil case.



Cal’s technique is just: _“Pssssssssssssssstttt, Alex, turn around.”_ He writes back sometimes, but he’s more a master of taking the load, not dishing it out; Mr. Jones has caught him a total of six times, and he’s responded with some variation of “Supes dupes whoops!” (to which nobody finds funny, at all, but that’s just showbiz).

To the “ _H_ ,” he scrawls, “ _e could save others from death, but not himself_.” And then he draws a shaky little light sabre.

 _1, 2, 3 . . . pass_. Flawless delivery.

Alex does this low grumble and says, “Aha!” to nobody in particular, probably just herself. (Cal’s smiling, to nobody in particular, probably just himself.)

Mr. Jones is sitting at the front of the room, wide-eyed at something on his desk, and the whiteboard’s got the numbers _“90-107”_ on it, and Cal can’t even begin to fathom whatever the fuck that even means. Minutes are blurring by—everything is blurring by, actually, Cal needs more sleep—and he cannot stop bouncing his leg. And he’s pretty sure his actual entire brain has just gone to absolute mush because he absolutely cannot focus on _anything_. His thoughts . . . like food on a conveyer belt. You see one for about one or two seconds, and before you know it, it’s gone, leaving you in its confused wake. He needs. To do. Something.

 _Do. Something._ Maybe he’ll stretch, or run a mile, or start a fire—just anything, really.

Carry Ladner leans over and tells him to please, for the love of God, stop bouncing his goddamn leg, and he decides it’s better now than ever to take a breather. He shoots up his hand.

Mr. Jones tilts his head in Cal’s general direction. “Yes, Calvin?”

“Can I go take care of something?”

“And what would that be?”

He bites back the urge to say, “PISS,” and instead says, “Bathroom, sir,” the PG-clean alternative.

“Sure. Just don’t run off.” Mr. Jones has a laugh, no one else does, and Cal raises both hands and says, “Haha. Sure. You can trust me with that one, sir,” then slips out the door.

 

One thing Bayshore isn’t is subtle. Tagline on their website: _“Let nature nurture our future.”_ Biggest spending of government funds: plants. Lots and lots and lots and lots and huge hallways of fucking plants. They’re not even well spread, and Cal’s no interior designer, but they’re all either stuffed in the ceilings or hushed over in corners, like someone made a huge Go Green PR announcement and then regretted it the day after.

Cal has a general idea of where the closest bathroom is. It’s down near the Small Oval, but he’s not even going there, anyway. It’s just nice to flex a few brain cells: _“Where are the bathrooms, detectives?” “Just down those corridors, Sergeant! Gee, look at all that greenery!”_

Honestly, there’s this certain air about skipping class that totally gets him off—you know, like staring into a classroom and thinking, _“Haha! Those little shits are in Maths right now!”_ Few years ago—a year ago—he’d take this feeling and go hog-wild: he’d be off on a “piss trip” and then his brain would go, _“You know what’d be neat? Taking the train to the city!”_ and— _woah-ho!_ —there he goes, off on a train to the city!

Some days, he’d just hang around the city all day; some days, he’d be halfway through ordering a donut at Seven Eleven when his phone would buzz with a text from Evan, something like, “ _Hey aa umm are you ok?? Did you get kidnapped or somethign i can’t find you! sory for typos not supposed to be using phon_ ” and then he’d crawl back to school.

Thinking about it just makes him want to do it again. But then that’d be Fucking Up—and that’s gonna have to be a hard “no” from him.

Cal could probably lap the school right now—you know, take a tour at his own pace—but then Mr. Jones would get suspicious and he’d realise that Cal actually _isn’t_ to be trusted, only two days into the term, and that a kid lied straight to his face. And also Evan would get worried, and he’d start to sweat, and then someone behind him would probably say, “Hey, dude, you’re sweatin’ buckets!” and then Evan would laugh but never forget it.

He should slug his way back to class, but it still feels like there’s a whole troupe of raccoons surging through his legs, and he desperately, _desperately_ needs to either walk or run them off—whichever won’t Fuck Him Up. And—you know what?—never hurt anybody to take, what, a few minutes off work? You know, it’s not like he’s gonna come back and miss the industrial revolution. He can afford this. Me-Time. (He-Time?)

Cal walks— _our killer! He walks!_ —without much direction, really: following his body’s orders on a whim. Sight-seeing, adventures—this is exactly what he needed.

(Cal’s Observation Organisation spies: more plants to the left, and more plants to the right! This place has the variety of straight white production team.)

He needs some spice, you know? His brain is drizzling down the drain, and his legs have landed him right outside the community bathrooms, which must be funny or ironic or whatever. He’s standing next to another kid—spiked hair (on purpose?); thick, _thick_ glasses—and that kid’s staring up at the wall, and up on that wall’s a poster for . . . the Astronomy Club. _“An appropriate place to . . ._ space _out.”_

“Hey!” Cal sticks his hand up for a wave, or a high-five, or nothing, really, because the kid doesn’t even seem to notice he’s there. “What are you doin’ out of class, buddy?” Ouch. ‘ _Buddy_.’ That hurts. If there were ever any chance he’d get a reaction, it’s definitely gone now.

Cal rolls back on his heels and studies the poster again. The pun’s the best thing about it, and that’s not really saying much. He looks back at Glasses Kid, still staring with undisturbed intensity at the Comic Sans-clad poster.

“Are you by any chance a . . .” Space-lover? Moon-freak? Alien-fucker? “. . . an astrophile?” Jesus Christ, yeah, _that_ was the fucking name. _Dis-gusting_.

“Oh my god, that sounds disgusting out loud, I’m so sorry,” he apologises. The kid slumps, then inhales sharply: that’s fair. Calling anyone any kind of ‘—phile’ must be punishable by law, somehow.

Sir Glasses adjusts their glasses.

“. . . They’re not recruiting yet,” they say, and they turn to look him square in the eye, like Cal’s supposed to be absolutely blown away by their information, or the sound of their voice, or just _them_ in general. Their voice—are they a he? _Too soon to assume_ , that’s the saying—sounds low and raspy and unused, like the broken records of their voice-box juke-box.

Cal blinks, then gestures at the poster. “Oh, yeah, definitely!” he says, trying to sound blown away. “On the poster, it says, ‘ _Debuting Week 3!_ ’ Can’t wait, huh!” Turn for approval, and— oh, they’re gone. Yeah, yeah, good conversation. He sticks a hand up for another wave—this time in the kid’s wake.

He stands there, takes one lingering look at the Astronomy poster, then turns on his heels. Guess he’ll finally haul ass back to class.

 

On his desk is a note—five, actually—stacked in an order that reads, “ _go you did where_ ” and a poorly drawn pair of eyes.

They’re from Alex, of course, and she’s got an arm draped over the back of her chair and every now and then she sneaks a glance backwards when she thinks he can’t see. (Cal’s note: He can.)

He slinks down his chair and prepares to lob a leg against Alex’s desk, when he feels three consecutive pokes in the back. Turn around, and—BAM! It’s Evan!

“S-Sorry!” his friend blusters. “I didn’t know how to get your attention and I just, um . . .”

“It’s cool. What’s up?”

Evan shoots both eyebrows to the roof. “What do you think is up?” he says, and his shoulders un-hunch themselves. “Sorry. You were gone for a, umm . . . really long time.”

Cal grins. “I was on an adventure, Evan,” he says. “I _saw_ things, Evan. Life is an adventure.”

Evan’s lips quirk like he’s gonna say something, but then he just shakes his head and smiles, and Cal smiles back. In his rear-view, he sees Alex twisting in her chair.

“Ad- _ven_ -ture . . .” she says, trying and failing to prop her elbows up on the backrest. “It’s been ten minutes, dude. You must really slug your way down those halls.”

“Well, actually—”

“ _Calvin_ ,” comes Mr. Jones’ voice—A.K.A. code for: Calvin Oliver has been fucked so hard he’ll never be able to walk again.

“What took you so long, _Calvin_?” Mr. Jones has gone all high and pitchy, like someone’s grabbed his frequencies and twisted hard, and he’s got that fake, ass-stretching smile you see on teachers before they start tearing you a new asshole. Huh. The situation kinda finally settles in. He was gone for _ten minutes_.

“Haha,” Cal laughs, and he just keeps laughing, stalling and strolling through his brainways for an excuse. Alex claps a hand against her thigh and mouths something that’s either, “You’re so fucked,” or “Oh, sofa.” Then she turns around, and leaves Cal, stranded in the sea of You’re So Fucked, no one else but Mr. Jones surfing the waters.

What can he even say? _“Sorry, I got lost.” “Sorry, I couldn’t find the bathrooms.” “Sorry, I reunited with my long-lost twin and now we’re planning a conjoined trip to Mars.”_

But, you know, in the end, it doesn’t even matter, really. You could say you were beat up by a troupe of tiny little elf children on the way back and a teacher would still have off with your head.  

Mr. Jones says, “I’d like an answer, _Calvin_ ,” and Cal scratches the back of his neck, super guilty, nothing-to-say style.

“Well, you see,” he starts to say, “I was on my way to the bathroom, like I promised, when I started thinking, _‘It’s insane that the stuff we eat gets converted into energy, fat,_ and _it still lives long enough to see its way out of our butts,’_ and then I guess that thought just lasted for ten minutes.”

“Did you get lost?”

“I might’ve gotten lost.”

Mr. Jones seems to have a little think to himself, and Alex’s turned back around again.

“Nice cover,” she whispers. “ _Suuper_ convincing.”

“You know what, Calvin?” Mr. Jones says.

Oh. Judgement time. Way too soon. “Oh, no, please call me Cal.”

“You know what, Cal?” he tries again. “Since you’re still new in a big school, I’ll let you off on one strike.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Cal says, with fake intrigue, “what happens at three strikes?”

“Detention, probably.”

“How about a car wash?”

“I’m giving you one strike.” Gee, for someone who’s about as coordinated as a rat on Wheelies, Mr. Jones sure knows how to latch onto a topic. “I’m cool.” He nods to himself. “I’m cool.”

“Yeah,” Cal says. “You’re totally cool. You and I—we’re totally homies.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Then Mr. Jones does a wonky turn on a wonky heel, and he takes his wonky leave.


	10. Calvin Oliver

Students have been clamouring Cal left and right, like he’s America’s newly undiscovered discovered model. He’s heard about a dozen, “Do you wanna come eat lunch with us?” and he’s turned down every one of them—lightly, Leo DiCaprio-style—because he’s already got a partner he wouldn’t trade for anyone else in the world: Evan Iston. (That was sweet, right? Cute? That’s what he was going for.)

“. . . You don’t have to sit with me, you know,” Evan says, Evan-style—hands clasped, voice low, eyes down. Cal hates that his friend’s always gotta feel so shit, really, it’s horrid, and he doesn’t deserve it.

So, he gives Evan his best smile. “I don’t _have_ to, but I want to,” Cal says, and it seems to do the trick for now. Evan returns a very soft, almost unnoticeable smile; you wouldn’t see it if you weren’t looking for it.

Cal leads them back to their secret not secret lunch spot—literally just the ten by ten courtyard—then whips out his Super Rare Awesome Mega Super Canteen Lunch. Cal does cook, but through a chaotic combination of being lazy and being broke and not having enough time, he often finds hope and joy in the cooking of others.

God . . . The canteen already _looks_ like paradise—what could it possibly taste like? Ladies and gentlemen, this may corrupt his buds forever. This, right here, may be Calvin Oliver’s first, and his last.

He’s got a classic: spaghetti and Bolognese. Just creamy, creamy goodness. Perhaps there’s a special ingredient . . . perhaps it’s just pure canteen magic. Un. Real. Cal’s living the dream.

Bolognese is totally subjective—all food is totally subjective, and all food critics like to think their opinion is totally _ob_ jective, and, well, Cal’s no different, really. He admins a food blog in his spare time—the comments have been disabled for about . . . hmm. Four months. (Cal’s note: Internet culture. Things got ugly.)

Personally, Cal likes his Bolognese like he likes his politics: rich and developed. (He also enjoys a medium balance of the meat and the tomato, but then he can’t make that cool-ass, socially aware analogy.) He likes the acidity of the tomato to be held up, supported, and counterbalanced by an element of sweetness generally found in slow cooked sauce; there’s no rushing a relationship, even when it comes to food. _Especially_ when it comes to food.

Judging a Bolognese, Cal follows his senses:

 

**Calvin Oliver** **’** **s Review of Bayshore Bolognese:**

  1. **Presentation**



Sauce: respectably red. Not too red, not too overwhelming, not too brown. As Goldie Locks would say, _“_ _Juuuuust right!_ _”_ (Lots of veggies, though. Makes me feel a certain way.)

Spaghetti: spread, layered, laced just right. Like a pile of wires. Strangely, indescribably sexy.

 **Overall presentation:** 9/10. (There’s always room for improvement! Take that spare 1, and use it to aim for the stars!)

 

  1. **Sound**



Spaghetti always sounds sexy. It’s like consensual ear sex, is what it is. This one admittedly sounds a bit dry, but you know what? Sometimes, that’s just what you need. A bit of dry to remind you to sit down, take it easy, enjoy life, enjoy the meal.

 **Overall sound:** 7/10. (It’s still a bit sexy.)

 

  1. **Taste**



**_OHHHHHHH MY GODDDDDDDDDDDDD_ **

First taste impressions: OH MY GOD

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in _Hell_ _’_ _s Kitchen_ , you can just come to Bayshore!

You look at the Bolognese and you’re like, _aww, cool, this looks neat_ , and then you take one bite? One fucking bite? Your taste buds and the Bolognese? They go to war. You’re bleeding. You’re crying. You’re prolapsing. The ambulance is fifty miles away.

It’s like finding out that kid you adored for eight years sells coke under the bleachers. It’s like watching Oprah Winfrey physically reach down your throat and pull out every single goddamn organ in your body.

 **Overall taste:** ohhhhhhhh my god/10.

 

Evan shifts, stares him straight in the eye, and rubs fresh, scalding salt into the wound: “How, uh, how is the food?”

Cal leans back, inhales the biggest scream of his life.

“It’s, ah . . .” _It makes me want to stick my dick into a burning trashcan_. “It’s a’ight.” Stay positive. Act like every cell in his body didn’t just disintegrate. _A’ight_.

Evan tilts his head, and hums, and smiles a little. “Well, okay,” he says, and it looks like the conversation’s driven itself up the wall. That’s how it usually goes when Evan takes Conversation Instigator. He says a few things, then he gives up, then Cal’s gotta pluck out some random fact and go to town. Cal’s whole Battle Box is just random facts and the word, “So.”

“So,” sure enough, that’s what he says, “did you know that Nick Cage once bought a pet octopus to help with his acting?”

“That’s wild,” Evan says.

“Yeah, he also did magic mushrooms with his cat.” From the bushes, Alex emerges, squatting. Cal almost doesn’t question it, because—yeah, you know what? Chick, lunging out of the bushes, unintroduced? When doesn’t that happen?

“Hey,” he says instead.

“Hey,” she says back.

“You gonna stop squatting?”

“Mmm.” She gets up. “We’ll see.”

Evan just looks mildly bewildered, or maybe he’s extremely bewildered, Evan always looks a bit scared.

“Am I . . .” He shakes his head. “Is this supposed to be normal? Am I dreaming?”

“That’s a lotta questions, mister,” Alex says, shuffling over to the fraction of courtyard Cal & Pal. are perched on.

“Did you know that you only remember, like, one percent of all your dreams?” Cal says, throwing up an index finger. “You think you’d forget this one?”

“I’m not sure I’d be able to,” Evan says.

“Good,” Alex says. “Now, every time you close your eyes, all you’ll see is me, squatting towards you at breakneck speeds.”

Cal pats down a spot. “You wanna sit down? What were you doing in the bush?”

“One: thank god you asked,” she sits down, “and, two: I might’ve trailed you guys here and eaten my lunch behind the bush and sat around waiting for the perfect time to swoop in—” her arm does some kind of motion, crashing-plane-style— “and hit you with that one-liner.”

“So, how long have you been in there? Like, ten minutes?” He turns to Evan. “Has it been ten minutes?”

Evan shrugs, then Alex shrugs.

“Yeah, probably,” she says. Evan nods and tilts his head her way, which probably means, _“Yeah, what she said,”_ or _“this makes me look like an intellectual.”_

Huh. Cal fastens an air-tie, and frowns, intellectually: “Permission to ask why?”

“Granted,” Alex says. “I wanted to come sit with you guys but I couldn’t come up with anything smart to say, so I kinda just sat there—” she takes a breath— “I think you guys are really cool. Can I sit with you?”

“I mean, you already are,” Cal says.

“Good note.”

You know, it’s super cool that Alex thinks they’re cool because Cal totally thinks she’s cool, too, and now they’re in emotional and psychological harmony, and there are no misunderstandings or anything, and Cal’s still dishing out stupid little facts—“Did you know that an echidna penis has got four heads? Like, what do they even _do_ with that many?”—and Alex’s actually laughing and Cal absolutely. Cannot. Stop. Smiling.

Gah. Geez. This is super weird, and super cool, too.

“Umm!” Evan says, and they both whip their heads around his way, and for a second it looks like he’s about to blow up.

Tick. Tick. “What’s up, man?” Tick.

His mouth sets into a hard line, and he pulls all his limbs super tight into his body. “Uh, I was just, uh. Wondering.” His eyes go to Alex for a second. “Have you, umm, finished eating lunch? Yet? I was just, umm, wondering—you know. Because, the . . . never mind. Sorry.”

Alex blinks, then gives this sort of slow smile. “Yeah, dude.” She stretches. “Don’t even worry about it.”

 _Jesus fucking Christ_. Cal almost—actually, you know what?—he _does_ roll his eyes. He’d not have a goddamn clue if this sounds bitchy or whatever, but, honestly? Evan just makes everything so _dramatic_ sometimes. Borrowing a pencil? The Civil War. Going to the bathroom? Fall of the Berlin Wall. Literally talking to another human being? Nope, that’s JFK’s fucking assassination now.   

The kid literally cannot go shopping alone, and he’s twelve, and he can’t talk to the receptionist lady because, _“Oh no, what if she’s judging me, another customer you wouldn’t even look twice at? Oh, and Cal, do my legs look weird?”_

There’s a small ball of anger rolling around in his chest, but you know what? Whatever. It’s fine. He’s not even mad. He’s just a bit annoyed, that’s all. He could never be mad at Evan, because he’s cute and small or whatever. Cute, small, and ruining the moment. (He’s got no reason to be _mad_ , anyway. Evan’s a good kid.)

“To be honest, if there were no social ramifications,” Alex is saying, when Cal tries to shove down whatever he’s feeling (Cal’s note: he’s feeling a lot, _lot_ of things), “I’d probably change my name to The Rat. Or maybe I could make it my celebrity alias. Alex “The Rat” Adams.”

Evan nods, still flushed. Cal nods, too, and he thinks of saying something, but his brain is still whirring.

(But, seriously? In a conversation about _echidna penis_ , you think to throw in a, _“Have you eaten yet?”_ ) (God. He needs to. Let. It. Go.)

Getting angry never feels good, really, and it’s never worked out that well for Cal, in general—there were a few incidents back in Year 3, the biggest of which when he threw himself down the slide and gave himself a concussion—so he just decides to drop it. To pick up the ball, and send it down the hill, far, far away from his arms or his legs or his brain, in general.

 

When he gets home, it’s the usual routine: kick uselessly at the welcome mat, slam his shoes against the wall, pick them up and put them on the rack (semi-optional—has become less and less optional over the years), slug his way to the kitchen, greet Mum, piss off to his room. Today, his mum’s in the living room and she’s melting into the couch—there’s _Jeopardy!_ on TV, and the question’s clearly: “What’s a frog?” He sticks his head through the doorway, says, “Hey, Mum, guess who?” then joins her on the couch.

There’s a few dirty dishes left out on the dining table. Cal premade a few servings of spaghetti on Sunday, but it looks like his mum ordered takeout instead. (Chinese? Cal can’t tell the difference between Chinese and Italian and Indian—those are the ones his mum usually orders, in rotation.) Maybe she couldn’t find the containers.

His dad’s always raving on and on about hiring a babysitter and shit like that, and a few years ago Cal was trying to tell him, “I don’t need a babysitter, I take care of myself fine,” and his dad said, “No, not for you, for your mum,” so Cal got defensive—he was, like, nine—and pumped a fist to his chest, ape-style, and said, “Mum doesn’t need a babysitter because _I’m_ her babysitter,” and his dad laughed and said, “Alright.”

Cal gets up for a drink—he’s so parched, and his entire body is in Hell—and his mum reaches for the remote, looks up at him, nods, says, “Hey,” then dips her head, which he interprets to be something a bit like, “Oh, hi there, son, how was your day? Didn’t hear you come in! Maybe you can sit down, we’ll talk— oh, and can you get me a drink?” So that’s what he does: Cal fetches some water from the cooler and settles down again. She takes the drink, eyes on the TV, and gives him another one of those beauties—those nods. Because who needs words when you’ve got Alex Trebek.

Honestly, at this point, Cal feels a bit like an anthropologist. Like he’s just gotta keep a notebook open, making detailed notes on each and every one of her nods— _“It seems this one’s inclined at a forty-five degree angle, which indicates that perhaps Christine Oliver is malcontent. In this essay, I will—”_

But, look. It’s not like he’s not complaining, you know? It’s, like, take what you get, you know? It’s cool. It’s totally cool, how they share, like, two conversations a day—and they’re not even conversations, really, they’re more like _Cal Talks One-Sidedly For Five Minutes And Maybe His Mum Will Nod Her Head Sometimes_.

As for his dad, he works. Across the country. And sometimes it feels like Cal’s been roped into a whole other gameshow, called _Don’t Get Your Hopes Up Because Who Even Knows What Your Dad’s Thinking, Ever_.

See, the agreement was, “I’ll come visit you once a month, son,” but now that’s unravelled into something a bit more like, “Flip a coin, and I’ll be your Christmas miracle!” Last week, they were on the phone and his dad said, “Sorry, Cal, I’ve got hay fever,” like that could stop him from dropping in, and Cal went, “Okay, good luck, then.” But it’s no big deal. They’re just not that tight-knit a family. His dad’s got his own circumstances, and his mum probably does, too, whatever they are. Sometimes it just feels like they’d be perfectly happy not to have him around.

Anyway, now Cal’s also lying flat on the couch—a finger’s length away from Mum—he’s saying something like, “Woah, that’s a real tough one, Trebek,” and he’s laughing but it sounds very distant. His mum looks pretty distant, too. He makes some passing comment about _Jeopardy!_ on the TV—actually, it’s on commercial break, so now he’s talking about Mr. Clean—and his eyes are drilling holes into the side of her face, scouring around for any kind of reaction. (She smiles, slightly. We got ’em, chief.) Reactions are always good. He punched a kid on the playground for a reaction, once.

A few more beats of invigorating, exhilarating silence and Cal’s mood has officially dropped to Bored. He pats down one of the couch pillows—he was gonna pat his mum on the shoulder, but then figured, _ah, contact’s taking it too far_. Then he stands up, hands on his hips like he’s decided to go assassinate Clark Kent, and claps the words, “All. Right. Great. Chat.” And for the final act— _voila!_ Calvin Oliver has successfully vanished back upstairs, out of your hair _._ (Fanfare, fanfare.)

If Cal had to summarise his room, it’d be: A Mess. But, like, one of those calculated messes. It’s not really on-the-nose about how messy it is—for one: the floor? Clean—but once you see it, it’s kinda hard to un-see it. It’s just an abomination of every single phase Cal’s ever gone through. He’d get into a band, he’d hang up a poster, he’d fall out of it, he’d forget to take the poster down. And that’s how you get “AC/DC: The Rolling Sex Chili Peppers.”

He takes his roller chair for a spin, travelling, like, 0.83764789 km/h on the carpeted floor—it’s a celebration dance, a victory lap, for conquering Day 2 of the Education System—and then he shoots off on a rapid beeline straight for his bed, telling himself once again that, no, it doesn’t hurt when he does that, and, yes, he should definitely keep doing it. His phone’s buzzing gently against his thigh; he fishes it out and flips off the cover. (Honestly, he’d forgotten that he stuffed it in there. His woodworks teacher’s words are still stuck swirling in his head, telling him all about how “phones in your pockets leave you at a higher risk of testicular cancer.”)

The thrilling conclusion: one text message, one PM from Team Snapchat, one notification from the _News_ app about the violent ‘basketbrawl’ that occurred last week. Item of interest: text message. Sender: Evan Iston. The legend himself.

**“hey umm. alex wants your number.”**

Cal’s interest: perked. He shoots off a response immediately: **“intriguing information. please quote a source.”**

**Evan: “alex adams, female, age unknown.”**

**Cal: “and what was the exact nature of the request? casual? hopeful? horny?”**

**Evan: “cal, if you ask another question i’ll just send you the screenshot”**

**Cal: “wait you have her number?”**

**Evan: “yes”**

A moment of silence in which Cal punches himself in the nuts, wondering how on earth Evan got a girl’s number before he did.

**Cal: “that’s. that’s cool dude”**

**Evan: “i guess?”**

**Evan: “not to double text, but should i give her your number or not?”**

**Cal: “oh fuck yeah”**

**Cal: “ohhh i’m gettin’ some tonight”**

**Evan: “i’m going to block you.”**

Cal sinks even further into his rock-solid bed, shaking with some kind of adrenaline—excitement? Anticipation? _Fear_?—and at this moment his phone is merely a metal brick, yet it’s also a spaceship, connecting his world to Alex’s, connecting his world to a girl’s. A girl who wants his number. That’s . . . That’s cool. It’s totally chill. Cal’s not freaking out, not at all. Hopes: rock bottom. Could not be lower.

Then his phone buzzes and— woah! There go his hopes! High as a fucking kite! Is it Alex? Is it Alex? Is it—

Woah! It’s an un-known num-ber! Things are looking good!

**“beep boop! i am a text message! is this calvin oliver? over.”**

And the spaceship has made a successful landing!

Wo _ah_! He’s squeezing the ever-loving shit out of his phone, he’s thinking, _Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod_. He feels like he’s just been zapped with lightning! Woah! Good vibes, just radiating off his screen.

For a second, he thinks about sending one huge keysmash, but then he decides, no, that makes no sense, she asked for his identity, not his internal crisis.

His fingers are shaking as he types his response: **“you are correct! but—woah!! who’s this stranger?!”**

And she texts back almost immediately. She’s _“Lightning Fingers”_ —wait, no, that sounds strangely sexual.

**Alex: “drumroll please!! it’s me, alex adams!!”**

**Cal: “woah—! clap, everyone!”**

**Alex: “woah!!”**

Alright. He’s nodding, very intensely. _Alrightalrightalrightalrightalright_. The operation is smooth-sailing, the conversation is casual, and that’s when he decides, _that’s it, it’s time_. It’s time to whip it out. To test the waters.

To send his first keysmash: **“A;E;JAG;IFJDKLV”**

And the tensions are high and the stakes are high and his hopes are high, and— Woah! We have a response!

**Alex: “SJHGDNHLGKJSVBNKJHDGJKBJCGHJKHFL”**

_Chills_. Literally chills. Cal is shaking.

God, talking to girls is _great_. It took five whole years to reach the Keysmash Phase with Evan, because every time he’d do it, Evan would go, _“oh my god, are you ok? are you injured?”_ and Cal would have to respond, _“no, not at all—in fact, i was laughing, even if it looked like i was having a seizure.”_

_Bzzzzzzzrrrrrrrt . . . Bzzzzzzzrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttt . . ._

Hmm. Noise. He looks down, and . . . his hands . . . his hands are . . . dialling Alex. Oh no. When it clicks, when he realises _OH MY GOD_ , his brain has gone absolutely haywire. Everything in his body is fighting for some semblance of control; his fingers are saying, “Aww, cool, we’re gonna talk to a girl,” and his arms are saying, “Hey, you know what, maybe this isn’t that bad,” and his legs are saying, “STOP DROP AND ROLL STOP DROP AND ROLL,” and Alex is saying, “Hey, what’s up?”

Oh. Alex. She . . . picked up. He cannot determine whether this is good or bad, so he has settled on Bood (or, alternatively, Gad).

 “He-e-e-e-e-e-y.” His voice-box is crackling, probably from the all-body anarchy that reared its ugly head just a few seconds back. “What. Is. Hap-pe-ning?”

“You tell me, you called.” The way she says “called” makes it sound like “cold,” and that is amazing, for no particular reason. (Is it British? Irish?)

“Hmm . . . Oh! Yeah! I called! Why did I call?” Cal’s chin and finger touch base, philosopher-style, and he stalls for time. Why _did_ he call? Some gremlin in his head whispers, _“Alex, I just wanted to hear your voice!”_ but he stomps it to death. _What would I need to ask her right now? ThinkthinkthinkthinkTHINK!_

“We-e-e-e-e-ll,” he says, like a gameshow host. “I was . . . I was, uh, testing your number. Checking for authority! _Am I being scammed?_ I thought, as my fingers raced across the screen, dialling your number!”

Alex laughs and Cal’s heart goes hot. _She laughed at my stupid, flighty joke. This is great._

“Well, am I glad you did!” she responds, and Cal may or may not be making a stretch, but he’s positive he can hear a smile. “I wanted to talk to you, too!”

Cal nods madly; he’s got the sudden, overwhelming desire to say, “Yeehaw!” for no reason whatsoever. It’s just there, bubbling around in his throat—but he lets it sit. She’d probably hang up if he heard him bucking around like a cowboy, anyway, and the next time they see each other at school she’d start calling him Cowboy Cal, which, actually, now that he thinks about it . . . isn’t actually that bad. 

“That’s . . . that’s cool,” says Cal, shoving his voice down an octave to give off the whole “this is cool, this is casual, I am calm,” vibe, instead of the “HUMAN CONTACT! HOLY _SHIT_ I AM _PSYCHED_ ” vibe. (Cal’s note: Holy _shit_ he is _psyched_.)

“The coolest,” says Alex, definitely sounding cool and casual and maybe just a bit psyched. Then there’s this long stretch of silence Cal doesn’t really know what to do with, so he cuts it off with about the most basic thing anybody could possibly say: “So, Alex! What’re you doing right now?”

Alex chuckles, or she giggles, he’s not really sure, and she says, “Thinking about you!” and Cal makes the same sound, not really knowing how to respond to that.

Then she says, “I’m kidding!” (and Cal’s still not really sure how to respond, or how to feel, or how to really do anything right now). “But that would’ve been so cute, right?” Alex says. “I’m thinking about horses.”

“Oh.” Cal nods. (There’s an action. Finally.) “I’m thinking about horses, too.”

“Oh yeah. Always,” Alex says. “Did you know that a horse’s teeth take up more space in their head than their brain?”

Oh yeah. Facts. This is where Cal _lives_. 

He did know that, actually, but instead he says, “No, I didn’t!” and laughs. Then he adds to the fact-fest with, “Horses can see almost 360 degrees at a time, too.”

She bats one back. “They can sleep standing up.”

“And laying down.”

“They’re measured in ‘hands.’”

“Love sweet flavours.”

“Umm . . .” Alex hesitates, and she hums for a while, and there’s a faint fumbling from the other side of the line. “Oh,” she says, quickly, quietly. “Their lungs bleed if they run too fast.”

“Are you looking these up?”

“Maybe.” A pause, then this light, breathy chuckle that totally feels like ASMR. “Oh, come on, dude! Of course I am! Aren’t you?”

“Of course not,” he says. “My facts are authentic. I am truly thinking about horses.”

“Are you serious?” Alex says. “How do you know all this? You’re some kind of obscure genius.”

 _Or some kind of obscure loser_. “I read around,” Cal says, and, well, that’s partly true. (“That’s cool,” Alex says, and Cal can’t really agree.) It’s, uh . . . it was a phase he went through. Year 4: “Calvin Oliver Of The Obscure Facts.” His dad got him “The Big Book of Random Facts,” and it was like Cal rediscovered water. It was an _obsession_ : he’d carry it everywhere, and he’d never shut up about it. His mum would sit at the breakfast table and she’d tap her chin and say, “Where’s my daily fact, young man?” and he’d say, “Oranges weren’t originally orange!” or “Peanuts aren’t technically nuts!” or “Armadillo shells are actually bulletproof!”

He’d read that goddamn book so many times he could probably quote it word for word. Even the publication details. _Paperback, July 19, 2016. Bill O’Neill, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform_. Naturally, it got on everyone’s nerves—the kids in class said it was annoying, and the teachers said it was annoying, and his mum eventually stopped asking him about it, so he loosened the reins. He put the book away. He became more aware of the things he was saying. The facts, though—they stuck. But he tries to bring them up less often. They’re good for conversation topics, and that’s it.

Obsession’s not an easy beast to conquer. Hyperfixation, or whatever it’s called—it’s not that fun.

He’s brought back into the moment—where did he even go?—by Alex making this long and muffled “hmmmmmmm” noise, which Cal eventually realises is her _“woah, I have nothing to talk about and this silence is making my nose fill with bees”_ noise, so he decides to go do what he does best: scoop the silence up off the floor. He starts riffing, just saying whatever and hoping it sticks, switching his mouth to autopilot while his brain leans back and makes another remark about how they’re “literally vibing so hard right now,” and “this is crazy, dude, this is crazy.”

He’s gotta check himself every now and then to make sure he’s not saying anything weird, anything like, “Hey, when I first heard you wanted my number it felt like my cardiac was doing cardiac,” but otherwise it’s pretty much anyone’s game. Riffing, talking on and on and on, that’s his thing, and normally people find it Extremely Fucking Annoying, but it seems to bide well with awkward silences and Evan. Evan doesn’t mind it at all, actually, because it means he just gets to sit back and look pretty. And it’s not like Cal minds talking, either.

Then suddenly Alex is saying something and his brain snaps back into action.

“Hey, umm . . . sorry I keep running out of things to say. I must be the worst conversational partner ever! Right?” She laughs: short, sharp. “Hah . . . Umm, I’m just not that good at phone calls.”

Cal hmm’s, almost involuntarily. He hadn’t even begun to consider that was a bad thing. _Is_ it supposed to be a bad thing? In Cal’s experience, it’s usually the other way around, actually—you talk too much, then they tell you to, please, for the love of god, shut up—so he says, “What’re you talking about?”

“Well, it’s no big deal. You’re cool, you’ve always got something to say, you know? That’s . . . You’re cool.”

Cal’s brain absolutely short-circuits—being called cool isn’t new, it’s really not, but it usually happens over the course of a few weeks, not a few days, and he starts riffing again, this time way more randomly, finding himself making the following points:

  * “agh well i guess if you say so”
  * “that’s cool that you think i’m cool thanks”
  * “well i mean uh thanks people call me cool all the time”
  * “they call me cool and handsome and what am i saying”
  * “yeah, the kids, they call me cool calvin because i’m cool and calvin and honestly just tell me when to stop talking please”



“Woah, dude, you’re like a fucking fountain,” he faintly hears Alex say as he reaches the final stretch of his riff. “Just— _pssssssssshhhhhhhhhhfffffffwffwfwwwfwfwwww_. Let me cap that word-piss for you.”

“It’s my technique, you know?” Cal says, feeling his ears go absolutely Red Hot. “It’s how I say so much shit. I just piss all over the phone line.”

“That’s disgusting and vaguely hot.”

“ _‘Disgusting And Vaguely Hot.’_ We found the title of my sex tape.”

That pulls a few giggles out of Alex, and Cal can imagine them jumping across the phone line, bubbling over the surface, spilling out the speakers.

He hears some distant yelling from Alex’s end, something that’s probably supposed to be “ALEX!” and then there’s some shuffling and then there’s Alex, muffled, yelling back, “MUM COULD YOU ACTUALLY JUST TEXT ME,” and then there’s some more distant yelling and then Alex sighs.

Cal can’t help but laugh a bit. Sometimes he wishes he could have screamo convos like that with _his_ mum, but it’s one of those dreams marked down as “Weird” and “Well, Probably Impossible.” They’re just not that kind of family.

“O _kay_ —” Alex lets out this kinda breathy chuckle— “Look, dude, I’m so sorry, but uh . . . I’m needed elsewhere! And, umm, I really don’t want to cut this short but! Umm . . .”

“No, yeah, that’s fine! I guess it’s like you’ve just gotta break off the story for a sidequest, you know?”

“Yeah! Definitely!” She’s laughing. Nice. “And you, my sir, I shall soon return to rescuing—vis-à-vis, talking to.”

“Hell yeah.” Cal throws a glance ceiling-wards, waiting for Alex to end the call, feeling a bit like he’s standing at the edge of a cliff, like he’s just gotta to say a few last words: “Hey, so, uh, before you go, uh.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Thanks for talking to me, I know I just called you out of nowhere and, like . . . just, thanks for picking up. This was cool!”

“Oh, no, it’s okay. Thanks for calling!”

“Yeah, uh, thank you. Thank you, too.” What is he saying. “Still, uh. Thanks for thanking me, that’s what I meant. You know. Politeness.”

Alex laughs anyway which proves she must be some kind of deity because anyone with half a brain would’ve hung up by now which sounds like he’s insulting her but really he’s just more impressed that she’s willing to put up with him for this long and that’s what he meant really.

“To politeness! Cheers!” she says, and it’s not wishful thinking, there’s definitely a smile there. “To saving my mother! I must bid you adieu, but we’ll talk later!”

“Yeah, of course!” He raises a hand. “Adios!”

“Adios!”

Then there’s the quiet _beep-beep_ at Phone Call’s End and Cal has to really lean back and let it all sink in. _How long_ . . . he checks his phone . . . Woah. That was fifteen whole minutes? No way. Does he look as flushed as he feels? Hand to cheek, and— yeah, _god_ , his face is _burning_. He’s so hot—his phone, also burning, feels cold in his hands. And Alex’s number blinks balefully at Cal just out the corner of his eye.

He saves the number as “Alex,” although the strange swell in his chest says maybe he should add something else, too.


	11. Evan Iston

Evan’s got a confession, another one: he’s knees deep in an affair—with space. He’s deeply in love with every single one of those tiny fairy lights.

Only a few people know this: Cal, and the cosmos, probably. It’s not like he’s ashamed of it, not really—it’s probably just, like, an unwritten rule that you’re not allowed to genuinely enjoy anything as a teenager if you want to be Cool. Enjoying things is for adults, and for kids, just not for the weird, awkward stage in-between. Or, if you _do_ enjoy anything, it has to be:

  1. Sports
  2. Sex
  3. Being heterosexual



And Evan likes old movies and poetry and space. So, not ideal.

There’s just this certain thing about space that’s so interesting and intriguing and . . . god, he can’t even begin to describe it. A little bit out of reach . . . that little bit unreal. Space is always up there, changing, yet unchanging—a constant. Because even as people change and things change, he’s always got the wide, spanning roam of space. It’s beautiful.

And, also, it helps remind him that nothing really matters in the end. Not in a depressing way or anything, but when he’s fretting over how he said “thanks” to the receptionist lady, space is always there to remind him that, _Hey! You’re just a small human on a small planet in a small galaxy in a huge universe!_ It’s impossible to disappoint the Sun.

Evan wouldn’t exactly say stargazing is a hobby of his, because he hasn’t got any of the proper equipment (and then there’s that whole Light Pollution thing, as well). He used to love lying down on the hood of his mum’s car like the sexy male lead in a chick flick (with or without that sexy cigarette, Evan reckons), but now he’s older and he gets paranoid about things like, _What if the hood gives in and I fall into the dirty, dusty engine and I’m trapped there forever? What if my parents find out and they get really, really mad?_ So, now he usually just stargazes from the roof. That way he’s closer to the stars, even if it is just a storey closer.

But on some days, like today, he crawls out to Birchville Hill for an even closer look at the sky. His parents don’t let him go out past dark—so, during summer, around 7pm—but he dodges that bullet by saying he’s out with Cal. It works because his parents can’t really go against it if Cal’s parents don’t, and he can’t remember the last time Cal’s mum cared about stuff like this.

Usually, he doesn’t lie about Cal, but today he just needs a bit of a breather. Everything’s felt so tight for the past few days—it’s like the air keeps closing in, more and more, like his lungs keep getting smaller and smaller—and he just needs a moment where he can let go, lie down, surround himself with the stars. If Cal were here, he’d be too busy controlling his noisy heart and his flushing face to even _try_ unwind. It’s a good idea. Definitely.

Birchville Hill is the one from the rumour, but it wasn’t the rumour that got him up here in the first place. He stargazes from Birchville all the time—and it’s not bad during the day, either. He can see the train tracks and Burger King and the petrol station with the dancing yellow man billowing in the wind. But it’s best during the night, where, even with the light pollution, he’s still got other stars to look at: the lights of the city.

Evan knows this place almost inside out. (He doesn’t know any place exactly inside out, to be honest, because things are always changing, but this is the closest to “inside out” he’ll get.) He could probably do a tourist’s guide of Birchville: _Although very bare, the Hill’s charm point lies in its height; very few trees scape the land, and there is very little to prevent you from seeing right across the city. There’s a few benches, huts, etc., but still no elevator. It’s a five minute climb, but totally worth it, if you’re a loser._

It’s 6:53, Thursday evening, and the Hill’s coated with a very thin layer of Human. For a while, he just walks, somewhat aimlessly, the only thing on his mind: _Too many people. Too many people_. (“You could’ve chosen _any_ day to come,” Martin says, “and you chose Hill High Season.” _Woah_ , Evan thinks, _making up acronyms? Freaky_.)

Evan spots himself a corner on the third grassy clearing he sees. Picking a spot is a skill . . . it’s a process. It’s strategic—not too close to any trees, as not to obscure view, but not too centred, not too bold, not too obnoxious. It’s like a checklist. No one wants to be the kid thinking he’s entitled to the middle of the field. He’d only open that can of worms with Cal, or his parents, but he could never bring his parents to the Hill because they don’t understand that the moon isn’t a star.

The chill in the air is minimal, but crisp, surprisingly enough. And he’s kinda glad Damien pushed for that jacket, even though James insisted it was “blasphemy, come on, guys, it’s, like, three million degrees outside.” He flops—well, he doesn’t _flop_ , he tucks n’ unfolds—down onto the grass, then wriggles a few limbs for size. The grass rustling and the Martin telling him, “You are literally so goddamn immature,” eventually gets too loud, and he stops.

As the Sun’s light gives out, Evan makes his wish again: _Cal. Calvin Oliver_. Best to keep it simple, he reckons. Besides, he couldn’t possibly come to this hill every week and wish for something like, “I want Calvin Oliver to take me into his beautiful, beefy arms and carry me into the sunset and kiss me until our lips turn blue,” without actually dying of blood loss.

The sky dims in a matter of minutes, and he can only imagine what he looks like right now, alone in the dark. He’s got no rug, no family, no friends—just him, sprawled out on the grass, staring up at the stars. It’s almost sad. (“Oh, no, it’s definitely sad,” Damien says, so quietly, Evan can only assume he’s tired, too.)

It’s hard to describe how stargazing feels. Almost like everything’s slowed down, even if it’s just for a little bit . . . like experiencing jet lag. It doesn’t even feel like you’re in your own body. On some days, it’s like someone’s slowly taking a huge weight off your chest.

On other days, it’s more like being sucked into a vortex, a black hole. Everything dark and churning, and there’s this great, heavy weight pulling you down, like it’s attached to your feet even though you can’t see it. It really just depends on how you feel.

Today, Evan just feels burnt out. Completely and utterly gone. Dragged right under the grass, sinking into the Earth, dying, never being seen again. Nothing feels good. It’s so weird.

He can’t even begin to imagine why he’s feeling like this. James keeps telling him it’s the “high dive into the School Pool, haha!” but it’s only been three days . . . If this is all he can take, he’ll never become a functioning adult, and he’ll never get a job, and he’ll die on the streets, cold and alone, nothing but wasted potential. It’s not like it’s ever going to get _better_. He’s still got Years 8-12, then college, then work . . . there’s really no escaping it until—

Until he dies. Or he goes off the grid—but that’s illegal, and Evan’s got the backbone of a chocolate éclair.

It’s hard to look forward to anything, really. James says, “Push through today and you’ve only got one more day until the weekend!” and then everything else says, “But you know what comes before the weekend? Friday. And you know what you have to do on Friday? Show up to school. Talk to people. Talk to Cal. Talk to Alex. Be a normal, functioning human being.”

He doesn’t feel ready, not at all, not for anything. He wants another break . . . he wants to hide away for a while. An empty space: just him, the sky, some comfy jackets, some good food, and his laptop. And maybe he could ship Damien and Martin and James off to Hawaii—or maybe he’d keep James around, just to remember what human interaction feels like. But, you know: it’s nothing but a pipe dream.

Evan looks back up at the sky. ( _It’s kinda like . . . an alien disco . . ._ ) This isn’t how this evening was supposed to go. He was supposed to just let his mind go blank, but instead it’s leapt the fence and gone racing the speed of three horses, and now he feels even worse than before, _and_ his headache’s grown to the size of an oak tree. _Counterintuitive_ , Martin would say, and, actually, it’s strange he’s not saying it.

“Oh, _sorry_ , you were just thinking about how much you wanted to ship us off to Hawaii, so I didn’t think you really needed my input,” is what Martin says instead. (Funny.)

Evan stretches an arm, reaching for the stars, like an actual cliché. It’s stupid, because you can’t actually reach the stars, ever, and even if you could, they would burn you to a crisp and you’d die. So, really, stars are sirens, temptresses, killing machines, but, _god_ , if they aren’t gorgeous.

He wriggles his limbs around again, like that might just somehow clear his mind, and he almost doesn’t notice the person sitting down next to him. Evan shoots a quick look sidelong—and who would’ve guessed, you can’t see faces in the dark—and his whole body goes absolutely still, surging with unfiltered, unadulterated ginger panic. Questions dip in and out of his brain, in three columns, four rows, and the ones he catches hold of say things like, _Who is it who is it who is it who is it who is it **who is it who is it?**_

He’s almost mad. Who sees a kid lying alone on the hill and decides to _join_ them? Doesn’t that just give off a generally bad vibe—a “hey, that’s a bit creepy, ain’t it?” vibe? No one does that, unless they’re Cal, and—oh my god, is it Cal? No . . . no way, right?

Another look, and . . . nope. It isn’t. (Evan’s strangely disappointed. His head and his heart and his body are not cooperating at all.)

“Maybe they’re gonna kill you,” Damien says, in that “telling stories by the campfire” kind of voice.

“They’re not gonna _kill_ you,” James says, and Evan shrugs, because he didn’t even _begin_ considering that. “They’re totally your age.”

“Never heard of child murderers?”

“And why exactly would they kill Evan?” Martin says, deciding to speak again. “I don’t recall crossing them before.”

“Because he looks hopeless and sad, because they think, _‘Oh, if I kill this brat, no one’ll even notice!’_ And they’re not wrong, really.”

“Oh my god, Damien, can you please just. Stop. Talking.”

Evan can kinda feel James looking over him, all motherly, all “did the bad man hurt you,” but, honestly, at this point it doesn’t even affect him anymore. Evan doesn’t _care_. Damien can say whatever he wants; it doesn’t matter.

As smoothly, casually, inconspicuously as possible, Evan pushes himself to a sit. It feels weird lying there, all exposed, when there’s someone else he doesn’t know right next to him. Feels strangely vulnerable, like the few silent moments when the dentist looks over your mouth and you look over all his drills.

Evan brings his knees up to his chest and shoves his nose into the little space they make. _Okay. Good. Easy. Casual. You are serene. You are a flowing river on a warm spring’s day. You are . . . a shaman. Completely in control. Not shaking. Not at all_.

No, he’s shaking, he’s totally shaking; he’s trying to convince himself _it’s just shivering, I’m just cold_ , but he and everyone else in his brain knows that he’s totally a wuss who definitely thinks some kid is gonna pull a hatchet on him and slice his head open. Or, god forbid, they’re gonna _talk_ to him.

Evan sneaks a look, and it must not be as smooth or casual or inconspicuous as he thinks it is, because the kid catches him in the act. They make one painful second of eye contact, then the kid slowly pulls away—coolly, not blustering and fumbling like Evan, but like they planned that eye contact all along.

Evan watches their head tilt towards the sky. “The moon,” is all they say. Their voice is low and raspy and . . . still very cool. That was an invitation to the conversation, wasn’t it? Evan’s brain whirrs and whirrs and whirrs, and churns out a string of commands: _“say something say something say something say something,”_ and he hears it, loud and clear, but it’s more a matter of gathering words—

“T-The moon sure is, umm, bright, toda—tonight, huh? Isn’t it?”

Broken chunks. Ice dispenser. _Psssssh—boom_. His voice wasn’t even an _ounce_ cool, it was high and quiet and nasally and overall disgusting, overall “grab your hatchet and put me out of my misery.” Every single inch in Evan’s body is begging to be buried alive.

And instead of thinking about how much the kid probably wants him dead, he stares up at the sky, too, noting the bright glare of the moon instead of noting the loud racket of his mind. Full moon tonight, it looks like. (“You should say something about the full moon,” James says, the usual _oomph_ in his voice all burnt out.)

He almost doesn’t try, but in the dark, surrounded by stars, he loses all sense of rationality and says, “Full moon,” like a toddler learning its vowels—like a twelve-year-old who just wants to die, so much, right now. He’s starting to wonder how much James actually hurts him instead of helping him, and whether or not he should just start listening to Damien more because at least Damien tells it as it is and keeps him out of social and physical traffic.

The kid turns to stare at him again, a few seconds this time, then nods slowly, like they’ve just watched Evan spell out his name. They could start clapping derisively, sarcastically, _god_ -you’re-an-idiot-ly, but they don’t, and Evan respects that. He nods back, and then they both turn away. (That’s a poetic lie: Evan doesn’t exactly turn away, he just keeps staring, albeit out of the tiniest sliver of eye shot. For some reason, he can’t _stop_ staring. There’s something so curious about this kid—cool, mysterious, giving off this . . . Jason Dean vibe, actually—dappled in the moonlight. So, yeah: poetic.)

And they sit, saying nothing, eyeing the sky; Evan half-cups his left cheek so he can sneak looks in more secrecy, only half-registering how creepy it feels. God, there’s so much he can’t see in the dark—he gets the general silhouette (spiked hair, it looks like), and that’s it; the night leaves him hanging.

For a second, he just wants the whole world to light up, or maybe just this hill, or maybe just this spot—like, maybe he could just grab a huge light switch and—

“What in gay hell are you thinking?” Martin asks him, but he ignores it. He’s realised he really, really, _really_ wants to know this kid’s name.

But, of course, it’s not like he’s going to ask.

“Hey, umm, what’s your name?”

**_WHAT_ **

**_WAS_ **

**_THAT?_ **

His brain erupts into a choir of _NONONONO **NONONONONO**_ and **_AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA_** and Evan backpedals as fast as he can.

“Ah, just, _gack_ —eck, eugch, uh, I was just, ah—was, umm, I—” _no, no, no, it’s not working, no no no no no no no no no—_

He’s panicking, but not panicking hard enough not to see their head turn just that tiniest bit further away. _Oh no_.

“. . . It’s Frazer.”

OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY. Evan makes some kind of noise that sounds a bit like a balloon deflating and/or blowing up, and he’s super super _super_ excited—which, other than the planet exploding and everyone dying a collective, fiery death, is probably the worst thing that could possibly happen at this very moment. See, the thing is, whenever Evan gets excited, his body becomes the netherverse and his hands start jittering about like a kid who’s had way too many soft drinks, and he’s so glad it’s dark right now so only he has to know how stupid he looks.

“Are you . . . okay?”

Hands: dropped. There’s the tiniest chance that maybe perhaps Frazer saw that and an even bigger chance that maybe perhaps probably Evan wants to dismember every single limb of his and place each one on a separate burning sun for the rest of ever.

“Ye-Yeah! I’m oka—fine—great!” _Aaaaagh_. He’s _stumbling_. This is bad—so, so, so unfathomably bad. He’s just learnt Frazer’s name and now he’ll probably never see them again, or, even if he does, they’ll remember him as the “Arms Kid,” or maybe the “Weird Arms Kid,” at best.

“Your name,” they say, and Evan blinks.

“M-My name?”

“Your _name_ ,” they say again.

“Oh, umm, do you, uh, do you want my name?” he says, and Martin goes, _“Of course they want your fucking name, dimwit,”_ and then Evan says, “It’s, umm, E-Evan. Iston. Evan Iston,” the exact same way he did on Tuesday. (He needs to stop doing that. No one even wants his last name, anyway.)

They repeat it a few times—“Evan Iston . . . huh . . .”—and then they say, “Okay,” and then they get up and leave.

 

It’s 7:30, and on the semi-dim-lit walk back home—he always brings a torch for good measure, and a pocket knife for parent measure—Damien tells him, “You know, you were totally throwing yourself at that kid.”

And because it’s dark and there’s no one else around and he’s tired beyond recognition, he says, aloud, “I literally just asked their name.”

“Uhh, _doy_ ,” Damien says, like you’ve just told him the Sun rises in the morning, or that the Earth is round. “Might as well’ve held up a sign that said: ‘I’m single!’”

Evan says, “I literally just asked their name!” again, but this time in a louder hiss-whisper.

“Do you want me to repeat my points or are you just saying that again because you’ve run out of things to say?”

If Evan were literally anyone else, he’d roll his eyes and go, “I’d like you _explain_ ,” and also perhaps not be having an imaginary conversation with a guy in his head, but, really, he already knows what went wrong. Stranger sits next to you, says two words, goes silent—not exactly ripe for a heart-to-heart, but of course he took it there because . . . because what? Oh my god, he actually has no idea why he did it.

“Maybe you just wanted a friend! That’s natural for teenagers, and humans in general, and animals, too!” James says. “You were, umm, throwin’ out a mating call!”

Actually gross. “Please don’t say that.”

“ _Orrrrrrr_ ,” Martin says, _really_ dragging out the sound, “you’ve been so deprived of genuine human contact for the past twelve years that you’ve latched pathetically onto this new face, throwing caution right into the wind. Conclusion: Stockholm.”

“He does not have Stockholm Syndrome,” James says. “You’re being actually insane.”

“He does not have Stockholm Syndrome,” Martin parrots, “ _yet_.”

It’s not like Evan _doesn’t_ have friends. He’s not that pathetic.

Yet.

“Yeah, exactly!” James says. “He’s got Cal.”

“And now Cal’s got Alex,” Damien suddenly says, loud. “Face it. You’re gonna get replaced. Alex is so much better than you. They get along like a house on fire—the good kind, I don’t get that saying, really, but in the end, you’re just gonna get thrown to the side, and you know it, and we know it, and I bet even Cal knows it.” Damien holts them to a stop, or maybe Evan holts them to a stop—he just feels all weighted again.

“Look,” Damien says, softer, “you’re trying to look out for yourself, trying to find yourself a back-up, and that’s fine—you know what, that’s great. If you accept that he’s gonna leave you behind, this will be a whole lot easier.”

Evan shakes his head, but it’s not at Damien, or, well, maybe it kinda is—this is all so new. Damien doesn’t really talk to him like this, ever, and Evan’s thinking, _What’s the occasion?_ _School? Cal? The Hill? The kid? Frazer? James?_ but in the end the weight is heavier, as if it’s moving up the rest of his body and pulling him down further and further, and God knows where he’s going.

Damien can’t be _nice_ to him, that upsets the balance of everything; if Damien’s nice to him, what’s he gonna start to expect from others? He needs the reality check. He needs someone there to remind him that he’s not that big of a deal, or his ego might just burst.

“It’s okay to give up, you know,” Damien says, and Evan nods and sighs and shrugs and all that hullaballoo.

Then they walk a while in silence, which is also relatively new—it’s not like everything’s completely void, it’s just that it’s all white noise. He’s sure there’s sound, somewhere, but he sure as hell can’t hear it.

Walking around nightfall has always been one of those Odd Delights for Evan, and James says it’s “aesthetic” and “fetch” and he would be saying that now, if Evan could hear him. At night, he gets to watch all the lamp-posts light up, all the houses go bright, and all the cars twinkle in the distance . . . like stars. In Evan’s galaxy. In Evan’s, and Everyone Else Who Lives On Ryde Street’s, galaxy.

At night, he feels transparent. At night, he gets to believe, even for the tiniest second, that he’s faded away.

It’s kinda lonely, but kinda nice, in the loneliest, nicest way.


	12. Calvin Oliver

The train the next morning is so cramped, Cal involuntarily brushes against at least ten asses on the way out.

He’s also at least ten minutes late to class—or, _Jesus_ , make that fifteen, minutes are passing so fast it’s giving him whiplash. It’s funny how time can pass so slowly on a Monday afternoon and yet race by so fast on a Friday morning, when you’re running like you’ve just been set on fire—and, honestly, he really hasn’t got the time to be thinking about this but he is anyway, and he’s also thinking about how, if a turtle falls and cracks its shell, is that technically considered stripping? And also does that count as indecency?

He seriously can’t even tell if he’s super awake or super tired—it kinda all feels the same at this point. It’s been like this for the past, like, eight hours. Just his brain going, _BRRR BRRR BRRRRRRR BRRRRR BRRRRR BRRRRR BRRRR_. Around and around and around and around, like a machine that just won’t turn the fuck off. Happens every time anything even remotely exciting happens: maybe it’s the first day of school, maybe he met a new person, maybe he saw a snail on the footpath—literally anything. It runs through his body all day and all night—whenever he closes his eyes all he sees is bright, flashing lights, spelling out: “Stimulus! Stimulus! Stimulus!”

He woke up seven times within one night:

  1. **Night Of The Awake: 12:00AM, half an hour after he shut his brain off**



Took a brisk walk around the house, watered the plants, said hi to Mum, hung up the clothes then took them back down.

  1. **Watching Paint Dry But Without The Paint: 12:30AM, half an hour after he tried to shut his brain off after previously failing to shut his brain off**



Took a piss, said hi to Mum again, fogged up the mirror, wrote, _“hello hello hello”_ then erased it, fogged up the mirror again, wrote, _“echo echo echo,”_ then turned on the fan and waited for the mirror to de-fog itself.

  1. **I Need To Get Laid (To Rest): 1:30AM, an hour of lying in bed and trying to shut his brain off and failing**



Kicked the bedsheets around, sat and stared at the wall, ripped a sheet out of his scrapbook, drew a bug named Tom and pinned him to the bedroom door.

  1. **Is Anyone There Please It’s So Dark: 1:45AM, fifteen minutes of God knows what**



Cried.

  1. **Just Me, Her (The Overwhelming Loneliness), And The Moon: 2:45AM, after an hour of sleep-deprived crying**



Rolled down the blinds, stared at the moon, texted both Alex and Evan, _“hey wyd,”_ and got a response from neither. Rolled blinds up.

  1. **I’m Feeling Itchy That Must Be Why I Haven’t Been Able To Sleep: 3:00AM, the devil’s hour**



Took a shower, said hi to Mum again, started thinking, “‘Most ordinary person’ in itself is a contradiction because being the ‘most anything person’ requires you to stand out in that category which no longer makes you ‘ordinary,’ seeing as ordinary is defined as having no distinctive features at all,” which is by far one of Cal’s longest shower thoughts.

  1. **Is That The Sun: 5:00AM, after two hours of tricking himself into thinking he’s asleep but, really, he’s thinking about the time Barry Bee Benson proposed a suicide pact in the _Bee Movie_**



Rolled the blinds down, watched the sun rise, rubbed his eyes for about five minutes because _oh my god, guess there’s a reason they say you don’t stare straight at the sun_ , and then he went into the kitchen and prepared breakfast and also noticed Mum had fallen asleep on the couch, so he gave her a blanket and a glass of water.

And then he passed out on the kitchen bench, and when he woke up it was 8:40 and the bus to the station had left about half an hour ago, so he walked instead and the trains were lagging because rush hour was over. And now it’s 9:20 at the Bayshore Station, and he’s about . . . hmm, he’d say, twenty-five minutes late? That’ll be fine. Honestly, if it gets too late, he’ll probably just skip a day.

Actually, no. That’s a, uh . . . a very bad idea. His brain is not working at all.

See, the thing about his stupid mentor classroom is that it’s all the way down hill, so it’s practically impossible to “just make the run for it” without still being, like, five minutes late. But when you’re already extremely late, what’s it even matter anymore? You’ve already been stamped, signed, and sent off. You are now Legally, Irreversibly Late. He could just show up a minute before Period’s End, and it wouldn’t make any difference.

No. Another bad idea.

When he leaps the stairs and finally turns up at M15, it’s 9:30 and he’s officially half an hour late, and he kicks—aggressively pushes—the door open, because there’s such thing as a dramatic entrance and he’s gonna make it his bitch. (Cal’s note: Things like these always, always end in detention.)

Mr. Mallory seems to be in the middle of saying something, and he’s wearing those glasses with the rhinestone straps, and he’s looking at Cal with . . . an unidentified emotion. Cal’s already shit at reading people, and then there’s Mr. Mallory, who’s like an old-timey English book. A constant campaign of _Is He Glad, Sad, Or Mad?_ Whatever it is, he looks like a bag of rocks. But maybe time is of the essence, and Cal will eventually be able to cook up a whole case study about “The Many Faces Of Mr. Mallory.” He’ll give it a few weeks.

“Calvin,” his teacher says, and Cal has this feeling he’s supposed to dig an emotion out of that, but, honestly? No fucking clue. Maybe he’s absolutely thrilled Cal’s shown up half an hour late, but then on the other hand, probably not.

“Mr. Mallory,” Cal says, anticipating either a “you do realise you’re late?” or a snide “would you like to tell me what the time is?” so he just answers both questions with, “I had a few minor issues, but now I am here and a bit late, I guess.”

He notices Evan’s been staring at him with his _“I’m not looking at you, I swear, I’m looking at something behind you”_ eyes, so he gives him a small wave and Evan buries his face in his hands. Alex waves at him, too, so naturally he’s grinning like nobody’s business.

Mr. Mallory asks, “What have you been doing?” and Cal inches into the classroom and says, “Training with the military,” which gets a few laughs, but none from his rock-faced teacher.

“Alright,” he says instead. “Sit down. You’re causing a disturbance.”

“Yes, sir.” Cal grabs a seat next to Evan and whispers, “Hey,” to which Evan just shrugs and nods.

“We’ll discuss consequences later,” Mr. Mallory says as he sits down.

“Oh, no, sir,” Cal bargains, “that won’t be necessary. I’m a very responsible person.”

“You’re half an hour late.”

“Yes, and I take responsibility for that.”

“Good.” Mr. Mallory turns back to the board. “We’ll discuss consequences later.”

Damn it. Alex cranes her head back—“Was worth a shot,” she says, and it was, it really was. It was a valiant effort.

Mr. Mallory is his mentor teacher, but he also doubles-up as an English teacher, which is pretty cool and/or horrible because probably the last thing you’d ever want is Mr. Polished Rock telling you you’ve got three homework assignments and an essay coming up Week 6, but sometimes things like that just happen and Cal’s kinda stopped listening anyway. Evan whispers, “Hey, Cal,” and when Cal turns his head, Evan looks bloated as shit, which is nothing to worry about because that’s just his _“I really shouldn’t be talking right now because if I ever talk when I’m not supposed to I’ll die immediately but I really just wanted to say something”_ face.

“What’s up?”

“Where _were_ you?” And when Cal doesn’t respond, he adds, “Surely you weren’t, uh, actually training with the military?”

“You don’t know that.”

Evan rolls his eyes, and Cal smiles. “Relax. I had a few mishaps. _A Series of Unfortunate Events_ : Lemony Snicket.”

“I mean, well. If you say so.”

“Yep.” If he were talking to anyone else, Cal would go on about _‘The Epic Trail of Friday Misfortunes,’_ but he’s pretty sure talking during class is, like, one of Evan’s Top 25 worst fears—and, besides, he knows Evan’s only asking to be polite. Still doesn’t mean Cal won’t tell him about it later. (You’re thinking, “Top 25? No big deal,” but fucking _death_ is in the 50’s, and, besides, Top 25 is really no joke.)

Recess comes, and Mr. Mallory pulls him aside, and all Cal’s thinking is, _Huh. Consequences. That’s a funny word._ Con-sequence. Pro-sequence. _“Come, Calvin, let us discuss the prosequences. I am Mr. Mallory and I smell like sandalwood.”_ He’s laughing, because Mr. Mallory’s looking at him weird, or maybe he’s not—god knows Cal can’t fucking tell.

Once everyone’s left, they sit down in front of the big teacher desk thing at the front of the room. (Cal’s note: When he was in Year 3, there was a rumour floating around that the teachers stored shit like candy and stickers and weed in those huge-ass desks—so to put it to the test, he let loose a few crickets in the hallway, waited until Mrs. Wellbelove left, then finally snuck a look, and it was really just a normal fucking desk.)

Mr. Mallory just jumps straight in. “Now, when you’re late, Calvin—”

“I say, ‘Sorry I’m late, blah, blah, blah, please forgive me, I’ll give you my kidney.’”

“You get a late pass from the office.”

“Okay, so I just say that at the office.”

“Yes.” Mr. Mallory stares off somewhere else, and it’s as Cal’s about to get up and leave that he speaks up again: “I’d like a serious answer to my other question, though. Where were you?”

Cal scrunches up his face, plotting how elaborate his lie needs to be, or how innocent it’s gotta sound, really trying to psycho-analyse his teacher sitting here before him. See, the scale goes a bit like this:

  * **Super mad?** Lie your fucking ass off, dude. Say you were at the dentist’s. Say you were removing a rib. Say your dad got into a speeding accident. Say you got fucking kidnapped by garden gnomes.
  * **Mad?** Lie, but watch your tale. (Hah.) Make it just extravagant enough to slip by. Maybe you moved houses over the weekend, and you’re still adjusting. Maybe you got distracted by a bunch of flowers on the way to school and just had to pick a few for your mum, who’s in hospital. Sympathetic story? Extra points.
  * **Mildly upset?** Tell the truth, but twist it. Elegantly. Overslept? _“A technical error occurred, causing an unexpectedly long bought of unconsciousness.”_ Caught up in traffic? _“Due to a continued lapse of judgement on my behalf, I’ve been filled with a certain intangible sense of distraught as I watched cars upon cars litter the roads, slowed only by the gradual, ever-marching passage of time_. _”_ Shit like that.
  * **Content?** Okay, well. They’re luring you into a false sense of security. Refer to: **“Super Mad.”**



And Cal settles for **“Mad.”**

“Well, you see, the system shut down,” he says, sitting a bit more upright. “It’s been a very hectic day, you see. Nothing has gone my way.”

“And what does that mean?”

Nothing! That’s the point! You sprout garbage until they either let you go or throw you into the dungeon! But, instead, he says, “Well, what does anything mean?”

“I’d appreciate it if you would just answer my question.” Doesn’t look like Mr. Mallory’s up for a bant. That puts a bit of a damper on Cal’s plans, probably.

“We all make mistakes, sir,” he says. “We all stumble on the road to, uh . . . victory.”

Mr. Mallory’s strange, shaved eyebrows hitch up his forehead, but he makes no words. Alright.

“Come on, sir, I miscalculated. I had a bit of a rough night.”

“That’s a shame to hear.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re still staying for detention, Calvin.”

“Oh,” he says. “Damn.”

 

Honestly, it’s not like he didn’t see it coming. Guess it’s like that saying: “Prolong the inevitable.” He kinda just wanted to test his limits—see how much he could get away with—and the answer is: Well, Nothing. And now the government is gonna send the FBI to his house and they’re gonna make him sign a legally binding document— _“Look Out, World! Calvin Oliver Fucks Up Again!”—_ and then his mum . . . will give him a slightly malcontent look, at best. (Maybe he’s not actually in legal trouble, but he’s sure he’s in deep shit with the Counsel of Calvins.)

He’s let out of the rat cage at 10:06, detention’s at lunchtime, it’s ten minutes, try to show up, try not to do this again, Calvin, have a nice day. Surprisingly enough, Evan’s waiting for him outside. (Or maybe it’s not surprising at all; it’s with the least offence that he says Evan’s probably got nothing better to do.)

“Hey,” he says. “Thanks for waiting.”

Evan smiles, and shifts a little on his feet. “Detention already?”

“Yeah. Lunch.”

“Okay.”

They walk for a while down the hall, Cal fills him in on all his deepest, darkest secrets—like this morning, when he waited around twenty minutes for one goddamn train and also found a raccoon eating garbage at the Bayshore Station, and then Evan sighs.

“. . . Cal, why do you always stay up so late?”

“Hmm. Habit? I’m fine.”

Evan pushes himself a stride faster than Cal. “Why doesn’t your mum ever do anything about it?”

“Hmmmmmmmmmmm.” Is that supposed to be an attack? On his mum? Yikes. “I mean, well, it’s . . . I guess it’s just not really, like, _weird_ around the Oliver household. She stays up, too. I don’t know what she does, but I party.”

“It’s clearly not good for you.”

Cal resists the urge to roll his eyes. These conversations are always fun, some guy acting like he knows more about you than you yourself. What’s Cal supposed to say? _“Oh my god, you’re right. You’re so wise. Please, take me back to your mansion and bang my brains out.”_ Evan’s great, he’s awesome, whatever, he just pulls shit like this. All. The. Fucking. Time.

“Gee, Evan, you don’t have to be such a mum. I’m fine. I’m alive, right? That’s the best condition there is.”

Evan stops near the end of the hallway. “Yeah, I guess. Sorry. Not my place, I was just . . . Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Cal closes the one-stride gap. _Yeah. Evan’s great. I’m not mad_. “It’s really just, like, none of your business, though, you know?”

“Yeah . . . Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

There’s no reason to get pissy at Evan, but sometimes it just kinda irks Cal that no one ever thinks his mum is . . . you know, a _good_ mum. Evan’s parents are always saying, “Well, Cal, you’re practically part of our family now,” and Cal’s wanted to say, every time, “What’s wrong with the family I’ve already got?”

It’s more that as a concept he’s mad at, not Evan. People take one look at his family and think, _“Woah, that’s dysfunctional,”_ just because maybe it doesn’t line up with everyone else’s. Not to preach—not to get up on some soap box—but every family’s got their own dynamic, you know? It sucks no one can see that. His mum’s trying her best, and Cal’s got no idea what goes on in her head . . . and that sucks, too. Sometimes he wishes he could do a bit more. (Sometimes he wishes _she_ could do a bit more.)

“Are you, umm, going to get anything to eat? For recess?” Evan asks him as they cross courtyard waters.

Cal shrugs. “Money is fickle, Evan. I think I need to start saving again.”

“For what?”

“My great escape.”

Evan gives this sort of bewildered smile. (Evan’s got a few different smiles. There’s _“I’m Actually Really Happy But If You Notice Then I’ll Probably Shoot Myself,”_ there’s _“Oh My God I’m So Fucking Embarrassed Can You Tell How Embarrassed I Am,”_ and there’s _“Haha, Your Tone Indicates A Joke But It Wasn’t Funny”_ and that’s the one Cal usually gets.)

“To, uh . . . to where are you departing, O Great One?” Now it’s _“Oh My God I’m So Fucking Embarrassed Can You Tell How Embarrassed I Am.”_ Evan doesn’t usually play along, so naturally Cal does get a bit hung up on it, even if it disrupts the rhythm of the joke. But he tries to keep his excitement to a minimum. So he kinda just grins a lot. And his words get at least twenty percent louder.

“A land faraway!” he says, pointing god-knows-where. “But now the question is—am I departing or am I returning? Where is my home? A planet far, far away?” The shit he’s saying? It’s not actually as much bullshit as it usually is. Usually when he’s riffing, he just pulls whatever the fuck he wants out of his ass and waits for Evan to laugh at least five times and then gives it up—but he’s had this thought before. About home, and stuff. About where he belongs. Or whatever. It’s really not that deep. It’s something that comes at goes at 3AM, and apparently also at 10:09AM, when you’re riffing it up with your best friend.

“Where do you think we belong, Evan?”

“Umm . . . well, you never know,” Evan laughs, “maybe there’s a star up there with your name on it.”

Woah! Double play! That feels good.

“Well, I’d want you right next to me, then,” Cal says, grinning. “Come with me to the moon, Evan. Space buddies.”

“Yeah, okay.” Evan laughs again. “Space buddies.”

Cal’s got no idea what he’s saying, but at the same time he also completely understands. (Guess it’s like that sometimes.) Shooting off to space, that’s a strange kind of intimacy. Riding in an enclosed shuttle, surrounded by the stars . . .  Somehow, Evan doesn’t seem like the right person for that. The right person is . . . someone he can dance on the moon with. God knows who’d fill that fucking criteria. (Where does he even come up with this stuff?)

“You wouldn’t need music,” he says, and Evan turns to look at him.

“What?”

“On the moon. You wouldn’t need music to dance.”

“Because, umm, space is a vacuum and there’s no air?”

“Because all the falling rocks give you all the rhythm you could need.”

Evan holds this look Cal can’t quite read for a few seconds, then gives it up for a laugh. He gets that look a lot, and Cal’s been able to break down a lot of Evan’s habits—what, with the being around him for seven years—but this is one he really can’t wrap his head around. And it’s always, _always_ followed by a laugh. Adds to the mystery. If Evan knew how much Cal analysed him, it’d probably chase him off.

Cal puts together case files for almost everyone. It helps him stay on top of things. Stay in . . . the loop, whatever the _loop_ is. You know how happy people get when you remember some tiny detail about them? Instant popularity. Suddenly you’re the Thoughtful Kid, instead of the Kid Who Hurled A Chair Across The Classroom In Fourth Grade And Also Never Shuts The Fuck Up.

Tiny details like that are never really a problem for Cal. He’s always in this strange limbo of incredibly ignorant and yet also incredibly detail oriented. He’ll forget his wallet and his keys and his entire bag, but his brain will cling onto the fact that Garrett went swimming last weekend and almost lost his testicles to a stray lobster. It’s the small things that get to him, like the half-torn, faded dentist stickers plastered on his back wall, the Chinese coin lodged in-between his work desks, and the fact that his English teacher wrote his grad. certificate in Comic Sans, specifically to piss him off.

Entire days can be a blur, but these tiny little details about people will shine like a lighthouse on the ocean.

He’s about 1% done on Alex’s case file:

 **Name:** Alex Adams

 **Bio:** A cool friend and a cool girl and I think overall very cool.

That’s it. He doesn’t even know when she was born or how old she is or how many dogs she has or when she goes to sleep or whether or not she ever thinks of him at all. And that’s kinda exciting. Getting to know someone is one of Cal’s favourite things, because it’s like a thriller/mystery/fantasy/anything and everything, really. The world’s full of so many people—it’s a bit sad to think he’ll never meet them all.

On Cal’s bucket-list is to one day know everything about someone . . . but that’s most likely impossible, so for now he’s just sticking to his case files and surprise birthday presents. People are one of the only things he’s good at.

When he sits down next to Evan on the courtyard steps, it feels a bit like something’s missing.

“Hey, where do you think Alex is?” he asks somewhat nonchalantly, probably, craning his head back like he just might somehow gain X-Ray vision and also an Alex-Detector. _Aletector. Hmm_. “Did we ever establish that we sit together? Are we a friend group yet? A clique—is that what they’re called? I wonder what kind of people— Oh, I get it. They’re called a _clique_ because they’re people you _click_ with. God, English is amazing, isn’t it?”

Evan cracks open some kind of muesli bar. “Cal, you’re talking way too fast. Slow down.”

“Okay. What flavour is that?”

“Umm . . . _‘White Cranberry Strawberry Flavoured Muesli Bar.’_ Mouthful.”

“Mouthful with your mouth full. Why are there so many words?” Cal whips his head a few times around. “Where’s Alex?”

“I don’t know, Cal.”

“Should I text her?”

“I don’t know, Cal.”

“I got her number a few days back, by the way. It was pretty cool.”

“I know, Cal, I was there.”

“Yeah. Okay.” His hand’s itching for his phone. _Itching_. “Should I text her?”

“I mean, if you want to.”

Does he? He . . . wants to. Maybe he doesn’t. He wants to talk to her, but then again, maybe he doesn’t. But he wants to know where she is. But maybe he doesn’t. It’s creepy, anyway, texting someone out of nowhere: _“Hey, where are you? We’ve only known each other for four days, so obviously that means I’ve got to know your location at all times.”_ Maybe he isn’t good with people at all.

“I don’t _know_ if I want to, Evan, that’s why I’m asking _you_.”

And then Evan just shrugs, so that’s great. In the People Area, Cal may not be quite as good as once thought, but Evan’s absolutely hopeless. Guess he just forgot about that for a second.

“Ugh. You know what, what’s it even matter.” The whole “to text or not to text” nonsense is all bullshit anyway. Cal doesn’t get it. There’s so many rules they never teach you about Human Interactions, like the fact that you’re not allowed to send two texts within a ten-minute time frame, or that you’re not allowed to wear the same clothes twice a week, or that you’re not allowed to phone call someone until you’ve known them for years—one that Cal definitely broke a few days ago.

Something that always trips him up is the concept of “being clingy.” Apparently he’s not allowed to go around saying, “Let’s be friends!” because it’s weird and cringy—like people think one day you’re just supposed to see someone and go, _“That’s it. That’s the person I want to be with forever, but it’s going to take a few years because instead of talking to them, I’m going to ignore them and hope they notice how much I’m fucking them with my eyes.”_ It’s all so weird and complicated.

Usually, Cal’s just gotta pretend that he knows all the social norms that have ever existed and that he’s the most confident person alive, and that’s what draws people in, or drives people away—really depends on the person.

It drew Evan in, he thinks. He’s not really sure.

“Hey, Cal, uh.” Evan’s voice draws him out of his whatever-the-fuck. God, being tired makes him pretty fucking introspective, not gonna lie.

Cal takes a second to repossess his body. “Yeah?”

“Umm,” Evan eyes his watch, “it’s the end of recess, so . . .”

“Oh.” Cal takes another second to swing his godforsaken bag back over his shoulder. “What’s next? Science?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then,” he says and stands up and walks off, with Evan trailing a few steps behind.


	13. Calvin Oliver

First ten minutes of lunch are spent rotting away in some far away bat cave, halfway across the school, where the blinds are rolled down so far you can’t see the light of day. In this hell-scape, there can only be three: Calvin Oliver, Sample Teacher A, and Tiny Glasses Kid. Sample Teacher A holds guard near the front of the room; Glasses Kid sits in the far-left corner, so Cal sits next to them, in the not-so-far-left corner.

“So, what’re you in here for?” Cal shuffles his chair a bit closer to them, and they lean a bit further away and don’t say anything. “Ah, I see. Silent but deadly. You killed them with your silence! I like you.”

Sample Teacher A tells him to read a book or work on some homework and _shh_ , so Cal shuffles even closer to Sir Glasses—and when he stares at them closely, his brain makes this . . . _connection_ and he feels like someone who’s been hungover for years, finally remembering what his fiancé looks like.

“Hey!” he hiss-whispers, leaning so far he’s about to topple. “You’re the one from the astronomy poster! With the spiked hair! I mean, like, you weren’t in the poster but you were looking at it, remember? Was that yesterday or the day before? Wednesday? Remember, I was like, _Hey, what’re you doing_ , and then you didn’t say anything and you’re still not saying anything.” And, yeah, okay, he hears it, he’s going way too fast. He needs to slow down or else his brain or his heart may explode, one or the other—or both at the same time. God, he’s so hungry. And Sir Glasses is giving him this wet-and-wrung-shirt kind of look.

“Don’t scrunch your face at me,” Cal says, taking a raincheck on that speed. “If you want me to stop talking, just say so.”

“Stop talking.”

“Oh.”

And now Sample Teacher A is giving him the same kind of look, and he’s never felt so personally threatened. She looks at him he’s _got_ a book to read—which he doesn’t, by the way. He slaps the head of his bag. This baby? Got absolutely nothing inside. In class, he writes on the desk or he writes on his hands or he gets a torn sheet out of Evan’s Maths book and crumples it up after he’s done.

Oh, wait. There’s something in here! He fishes it out. It’s a receipt for almonds. _Jesus Christ_. Today’s just the epitome of everything: how bored he is, how much trouble he’s in, how much he wishes Glasses Kid would just. Talk. To. Him.

“You know what?” Cal rocks back on his chair and it creaks and both Sample Teacher A and Glasses Kid give him that Look again. “You know what? I’m not gonna stop talking—I’m my own man and I—”

“Stop. Talking.”

Two words. _So. Our relationship ends at two words_. Jesus. What’s their problem? Cal’s sitting here, all friendly and approachable, and all this kid is doing is acting like a bit of a jerk. But then again, they’re in detention so maybe he’s dealing with some kind of hardened criminal, double-crossed and left for dead, too cold from life’s ordeals to communicate with a lowlife like Cal. Maybe they’re under an alias: _Raegan . . . Thunderstone_. Oh my god. That is so cool.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Cal whispers. “I think you look like a Raegan. Raised on the streets, left to fend for yourself. You know, if I had to take on a secret identity, I’d probably go for Lightning 775—oh, or maybe something more normal, like Jake Robert, FBI agent. Normal but still cool. Like Mark Lynch, a homeless gentleman with sword-skills that make the ladies swoon. Oh, this is fun! You should try it. So, are you a Raegan?” He takes a step back figuratively and stops talking literally—he takes a few breaths, trying to catch the kid’s eyes. They’re not looking at him at all, really. “Hello? Raegan? I’m gonna call you Raegan until you correct me.”

Raegan does not seem phased at all. Wow. What’s their secret. If Cal had a dude chatting it up right next to him . . . well, _he’s_ usually the dude. He’s never really been in a situation where he’s _not_ the dude. So, really, he has no idea how he’d react, but presumably he’d talk back, right? He’d give the guy a word or two? He’d contribute to the conversation? Well, again, he and Raegan probably go by completely different roads of life—you know, assuming Raegan’s still a hardened criminal.

“Busy week, huh? And detention on Friday just to round it off—god, that sucks,” Cal says. “Raegan, what’d you even do? Hey, I’ll give you five bucks if you can guess what I did. It’s a doozy.” He rocks back in his chair and stares Raegan head on and they still don’t give him a glance. He doesn’t even have five bucks to spare.

“Wow, you can really sit here and listen to me talk for so long and not talk to me back? Wow. That’s admirable.” And it is, it really is admirable, it’s just super annoying as well. Like, a lot annoying. Like, a lot more annoying than it’s admirable. So, they kinda cancel each other out. You know, like maths and whatnot. “I don’t like that,” he says. “Please say something.”

Sample Teacher A has honestly either stopped caring or left the classroom because she hasn’t spoken for the last few very long times, and now it’s just Cal and Raegan, staring each other down—except it’s not really “staring each other down” because Cal’s the only one doing any staring and all he’s staring at is the side of Raegan’s head. And Raegan’s staring at their desk. So that’s that.

God, he’s so fucking hungry. For some reason, Cal gets really antsy when he’s deprived of the things he needs to survive.

“Pestering someone into talking to you is not the best way to make them talk to you,” someone says, and for a second Cal’s gotta check himself because maybe he said it and just didn’t realise it, but it’s definitely not his voice because it’s low and soothing and Cal’s voice is loud and grating. He turns so fast the chair legs wobble. It’s Raegan. Or not-Raegan. He still doesn’t know their name—but maybe he can find out now!

“Yeah, but counter point: you’re talking to me.”

They roll their eyes.

“But, hey, while I’ve got you,” Cal says, “what’s your name?”

“Frazer.”

“ _Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh_ , Frazer,” he says. His brain is fully short-circuiting. “Definitely pegged you as a Frazer.”

“Clearly.”

“Well.” Cal goes in for a high-five. Or a handshake. Those two are surprisingly interchangeable. “I’m Calvin.”

Frazer stares at Cal’s hand like it’s gonna give them seven rashes and also Lyme disease. Guess they’re not a high-fiver, or a shaker— _is that even the right way to use that word?_ —or maybe they’re just not into human contact, and that’s going into their case file.

Cal reins it in and says, “You’re not a shaker, huh? What’s your last name?” and then realises those two phrases don’t really go together at all.

“Park,” they say.

“Frazer Park?”

“Yes.”

 _Frazer Park, Frazer Park . . ._ He’s crafting the file in his head, with the three whole details he knows about them:

 **Name:** Frazer Park

 **Bio:** The Wednesday Astronomy Kid. Likes to sigh and roll their eyes and not talk to me even though they wear glasses and can probably see me very clearly. Not a shaker.

This file will come in handy in a few years when they’re drunk to all rights and sentimental and Frazer hooks their arm around Cal’s shoulder and goes, “Hey, friend, how’d we first meet?” and Cal goes, “Well, friend, let me just whip out this handy little file of mine,” and then Frazer’ll go, “Woah!! You’re so cool and thoughtful, friend!”

Or something a bit like that, Cal’s hoping. He’s _really_ hoping that he and Frazer’ll be bar buddies one day. (Of course, for that to happen, Cal’s first gonna have to magically become a million times cooler and also stop using the term “bar buddies.”)

“What’s it matter,” Frazer says. They’ve got this cool kind of interrogator’s voice that’s always super low and monotone, which is like a cool filter that turns all their questions into ice-cold, grammatically incorrect remarks instead. It’s pretty cool.

“It doesn’t matter!” Cal says, and Frazer gives him some other kind of look. “I don’t mean, like, in a ‘you don’t matter’ way—I guess it came out wrong and I’m picking up what you’re staring down—but I meant it as, like, friendly banter, you know? I don’t know. I just wanted to know your last name for non-creeper reasons and my last name is Oliver, just so you know. I’m Calvin Oliver.”

Do all his case files count as being creepy? In the debate of _How High On The Creep Factor Am I_ , Cal always manages to emerge with the consensus: _“No, it’s a nice, thoughtful act. Clinging onto every detail someone tells you and writing it down in a secret file unbeknownst to them is not creepy at all.”_ But maybe he’s wrong. Maybe it is super creepy.

“Hello, Calvin,” Frazer says.

“Hello, Frazer.” Cal grins.

“Okay.” They turn back to the window. “Go read a book, or something.”

 

Over the last six minutes, Cal and Frazer have exchanged about another eight words.

_“I don’t have a book.”_

_“That’s too bad.”_

And now that their detention’s almost over, Cal’s only regret is that he couldn’t assemble his own _The Breakfast Club_ style ragtag team. Sample Teacher A has come back holding a blueberry muffin, and it smells like death and/or dusty cabinets. (Maybe that’s what the teacher’s lounge smells like.)

“Alright.” She waves her muffin, like . . . Cal doesn’t even know. _Like a flag?_ “Time’s up, boys. Don’t stir up more trouble, ’kay? Guess it’s fairly appropriate to say I hope I don’t see you two again.”

 _‘Boys.’_ **Frazer Parker:** The Wednesday Astronomy Kid. Male. Good information.

“Well, this was fun.” Cal gets up from his desk, and Frazer puts away their— _his_ —stuff (one book and a single pen). Someone knocks at the door.

“Come on in,” Sample Teacher A says. The door creaks open and it’s Evan, fumbling around with a canteen tray, saying, “Sorry, I was just, umm . . . was I interrupting something—I just, well, it’s been ten minutes so . . .”

The teacher laughs and says, “Young man, are you here to pick up someone?” and Cal takes this chance to say, “Evan! My love!” and walks up to him.

“Is that food I see? Evan, is that food?”

Evan smiles. “Yeah.”

“Did you . . . Did you buy lunch for me?”

“Yeah.”

“With your money?”

“Yeah.”

“No, no way. That is doing God’s work.” Cal pats around his bag for any spare change and then his eyes land on Frazer and his brain goes, _Whoop! Change of plans!_ and he says, “Hey, Frazer! This is my friend, Evan! He’s a friend of mine. He’s got that in common with you.”

“I’m not your friend, Calvin.”

“Oh.”

Alright, stuck one out and Frazer did not like it. Only stings that tiniest bit.

Cal turns back to Evan but Evan’s staring at Frazer, with his _“I’m not aware I’m staring at you but I am staring at you hard”_ eyes.

“Well, Evan,” Cal says anyway, “this is my friend, Frazer.”

“Not your friend, Calvin.”

Cal takes the tray from Evan and he stops staring.

“Oh, that’s nice.” Evan shakes his head. “Hi, Frazer.”

Frazer shrugs, then freezes, then waves—slowly, twice—then picks his bag up off the floor. And then he’s out of the classroom, just like that.

Evan does that kind of frown that’s not really a frown at all because it’s just a straight line. (So, Evan steam-irons his mouth into a straight line.) “We should probably leave, too, Cal.”

“Yeah.” He slings his bag over one shoulder—the left one, holding the tray flat with his right hand—and then waves with his head instead of his hands so it’s technically just nodding. “Bye, miss!” he says, because he can’t call her Sample Teacher A.

They’re walking down another hallway and it’s kinda like this morning again. Cal, talking about nothing and yet absolutely everything; Evan, holding onto his backpack with both hands like it’s gonna droop right off his shoulders if he lets go. (And it might—he’s got really skinny shoulders. Evan’s got really skinny everything.)

“Cal, I really don’t know what you were thinking,” Evan says as they round the fifth potted plant. (Cal’s note: Fuchsia. They look like tiny umbrellas. Floral umbrellas.)

“Yeah, well, that’s the exact point, I wasn’t thinking,” Cal says. Was he thinking at all when he was passed out on the kitchen bench? No. Was he thinking at all when he was half an hour late for school? Yes, but the thoughts weren’t relevant. “It was a rare moment of exuberance—liberation, I think—free from any thought, and now I regret it a lot, just so you know.”

“You regret?”

“Yes, I am a human being and I can feel regret. What’re you trying to say?” Cal shrugs. It’s not like he _likes_ getting in trouble. It’s nothing like that at all. It kinda just happens. But he’s trying really hard to make it stop happening. But it’s not working, apparently.

“You know,” he says, “now I’m gonna have to come home and tell my mum, ‘Hey, guess what, I was held in for ten minutes because I missed all my trains because I keep failing the _Calvin Oliver Go To Sleep Challenge_ and I’ve already gotten in trouble and it’s only the first week and if you’re disappointed? Feel free.’”

Jesus Christ. Cal rambles all the time, but these are the worst kinds. The kinds that are super dark and depressing, and the kinds that, when you start, you can’t just stop, and the kinds that make the people around you go, “Oh my god, Cal, are you okay?” and the kinds that make you want to go, “Oh my god, Cal, would you please just SHUT UP.”

Evan’s standing there like a fish out of water. He’s got that look—that look he gets whenever Cal does something stupid or that look he gets whenever he’s worried, and it’s usually when he’s worried about Cal. Evan’s grip on the backpack tightens.

“Do you, umm . . . Do you think your mum will be mad?” he says.

“Well, honestly? No.” _‘Honestly? Kinda wish she would be,’_ but that sounds weird and masochistic. “You ever have a son who just fucks up so much it becomes a commodity?”

Evan shrugs. “I’ve never had a son, no.”

“Yeah, probably should’ve taken that into account before the survey, huh?” Cal laughs. They reach the end of the hallway. “It’s funny. I was so hungry, like, five minutes ago, but now I’ve lost my appetite. Isn’t that funny?”

“Yeah, starving is hilarious.” Evan snaps his head up almost as soon as he finishes the sentence. “I mean— sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m not . . . I’m not actually sure.”

“Okay, then stop saying it.”

“Sorry.”

“Oh my god.”

Courtyard spotted. Cal is settling into a routine, which is new.

  1. Go to school
  2. Go to class
  3. Go to courtyard
  4. Go to class
  5. Go to courtyard
  6. Go to class
  7. Go home



(Necessities like eating and drinking and shitting sprinkled intermittently throughout the day.)

Evan’s gotten him some kind of dinosaur nuggets. Probably the best thing that’s ever happened in the history of ever. Probably. Cal’s way too tired to tell.

“These are nice nuggets,” Cal says. “Neat nuggets. You eat ’em and instead of going, “MMMM,” you go, “NNNNNN,” you know what I’m saying?”

“Cal?”

“Yeah?”

“Get more sleep.”


	14. Calvin Oliver

After school, Evan asks Cal if he wants to come over to his place again. Cal pats him on the shoulder, says, “That was a one-time thing, my friend,” then he heads off. He’s got some shopping to do—it’s almost a week overdue, actually. It’s funny how things like that can happen: how he can instruct his body over and over again, _“Go to the shops, you goddamn halfwit,”_ and yet he can still forget, mere seconds after he steps out the door.

On the train home from Bayshore, he wills his thoughts into a line: _“shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop shop,”_ but every now and then a few _“shop”_ s will go missing, and they’ll come back evolved into bigger thoughts—thoughts like, “Imagine you’re friends with some weird alien and it doesn’t wear any type of clothing and you just figure that it doesn’t come from a culture that wears clothes, but then you finally visit its home planet and they’re all totally dressed. How would you feel?”

Thoughts come in all shapes and sizes, just like people, and he’s asked Evan once, “Do you ever feel like you’ve got so many thoughts you don’t know what to do with them all?” and Evan said no. Cal doesn’t know how to filter his thoughts, or how file them away, so he just leaves them in the water—some will sink, some will float, some may bob up and down, resurfacing every now and then. Like, maybe he’ll see an apple, and the apple will remind him of Apple, and Apple will remind him of iTunes, and iTunes will remind him of “Make It Big,” an album by _Wham!_ for fifteen dollars, and _Wham!_ will remind him of “Last Christmas,” and “Last Christmas” will remind him of the Phineas and Ferb Christmas Special, and the Phineas and Ferb Christmas Special will remind him of the science test next week.

Cal can’t keep up with himself most of the time. Sounds and colours are jumbled together, like he’s having a seizure or something, but it’s definitely not a seizure because someone would’ve told him if he were having a seizure by now. And they don’t say that, they say, “Sit down, Calvin, you’re causing a disturbance,” and then he’s in the principal’s office again. Sometimes, all he can say to his brain is, “Hey, what was that all about?”

There’s still one or two _“shop”_ thoughts remaining, and it’s enough to remind him: _Go. To. The. Shops._ He hops off at Oston—there’s a mall about a block away from home. It’s nothing special: run-of-the-mill, got the essentials, _Coles_ , _Woolies_ , etc. If he were to add something, it’d probably be a McDonald’s.

So, Chef, what’s for dinner tonight? Cal rubs his not-so-tiny tiny hands together. Let’s see. It’s a white culinary classic—sausage and eggs, and it’s probably best suited for breakfast, but you know what? He hasn’t had a sausage in three weeks, so you bet your ass he’s gonna have one now, while he’s still got the craving.

 

**Calvin o’ Liver’s Shopping List:**

On a budget of $40, how will our contestant stack up against the current of capitalism?

  * **Outback Spirit Sausage: $5.00, _Coles_**
    * Quantity: 3 packs
    * Final pricing: $15.00, probably with GST
    * Notes: sounds more like a horse than a sausage to be honest
  * **Full Cream Milk (3L): $3.00, _Coles_**
    * Quantity: 1 jug
    * Final pricing: good o’ $3.00
  * **Beurre Bosc Pears: $2.50 per kg, _Coles_**
    * Quantity: 2kg
    * Final pricing: $5.00
    * Notes: how the hell do you even pronounce “beurre”?
  * **Manning Valley Free Range Eggs: $5.00, _Woolworths_**
    * Quantity: 2 cartons
    * Final pricing: $10.00
    * Notes: currently on sale! $1 discount!
  * **some kind of tea for mum i’ll decide when i get there**



 

Cal struts his ass down almost every single aisle of _Coles_ and then _Woolworths_ , and he’s pretty sure his whole body has either gone numb or autopilot. Honestly, shopping is probably the most goddamn fucking boring thing on the face of this godforsaken earth. All the aisles blur together, and all of a sudden it’s like you’re in some kind of knock-off British gameshow called _Why Is There No Spaghetti In The Pasta Aisle And Yet So Much Mayonnaise In The Asian Foods Aisle_.

Fourth aisle in, fifth aisle out, seventh aisle in, and he’s out the other side of the store. Cal grabs his Lipton herbal tea and his shopping baskets, and he takes them to the counter, and the nice shopping lady starts scanning them, and he, from lack of any human interaction for the past forever, strikes up a conversation about his favourite kinds of eggs—“the kinds that . . . crack me up”—and also about how frogs are really just huge mouths with legs, aren’t they? She responds with “Haha,” and “Uh-huh,” and she’s definitely invested, so Cal keeps talking—talking about coffee and lab coats and, if plastic comes from petroleum and petroleum comes from dinosaur fossils, then plastic dinosaurs are technically made from actual dinosaurs, isn’t that cool?

When Joanna ushers him out—well, her name’s on her badge, but Cal likes to think they’re on a first name basis—he’s in the middle of telling her that tearing a hole in a basketball hoop actually gives it less holes, so he quickly gives her a rushed wave and a rushed, “Have a good one, Jo!”

On the bus home, his brain won’t stop churning out thought after thought after thought after thought. He feels like a ticking time-bomb, but also like an unstoppable force—whatever that even means. Cal wriggles his fingers and wriggles his legs, and the man sitting next to him tells him to please stop and he says okay and starts rapping his fingers against the window sill instead, which apparently isn’t much better at all.

He gets off the bus with the same kind of restless feeling—like there’s this _thing_ he needs to shake out of him. Like he’s a kettle, filled with thoughts, boiling over. Everything’s way too noisy. The birds are too loud and the trees are too bright and his leg is itchy in this weird spot around the ankle he can’t quite get to, and it feels like he’s trapped in his own body, like he’s been put in this testing chamber and everything around him is a bass-boosted disco. Everything feels way too _slow_.

This happens sometimes, and it’s not always this bad, not when he hasn’t got a lot going on. But he’s had a lot to think about today, like how he just totally Fucked Up at school and the other kid in detention didn’t even want to talk to him, he fucked up that bad. And the worst part? His mum doesn’t even know, or care. He could go home and tell her all about how Mr. Mallory probably thinks he’s a rat sent from hell, and she’d just nod and then it would all stop there. She wouldn’t get mad. She wouldn’t . . . do anything.

And, well, that’s cool the first few times. It’s cool how you can deck a kid across the face and your mum would just say, “Mhmm.” But it also gets you thinking, _What would I have to do to get more than a “Mhmm”?_ Maybe he could plot a super elaborate underground scheme to infiltrate the government and create a law that says, _“Christine Oliver is legally obliged to talk to her son for at least five minutes every day.”_ Maybe he could make her a Spotify playlist—you know, songs like: _We Don’t Talk Anymore_ and _Somebody That I Used To Know_ and _I Wanna Dance With Somebody_ (the oddball).

He had taken on that Not Fucking Up policy because, just for a second, he thought, _Maybe I can be good for once_. Like, maybe if he came home with perfect attendance and perfect grades, she’d pat him on the head and go, “Well done, son, let’s sit down and watch _Mean Girls_ together.” The other plan was Act Out, Jack A Bike, Rob A Bank, Get Arrested and then his mum would have to visit him in jail. None of them have been working out so far.

But it’s no big deal. His head’s just super crowded right now, which isn’t his mum’s fault. He probably just needs to run it off. Get some air in his head. Blow out all that negativity. _Boom!_ Something like that.

Cal drops his bags down near the counter, tells his mum he’s going for a walk (to which she doesn’t reply), and then he sprints down some street, then another, and he’s not even tired—he can’t feel it at all. He sprints out past the park, and out past the hospital, and out past this old wooden bridge no one uses anymore, and he considers crossing back and forth over it, just to wear its use so it doesn’t feel lonely or unwanted, so he does just that.

Back, forth. Back, forth. (Oh! Forth and back! Let’s shake it up a little.) His brain’s flickering bright lights, flashing images in and out of his head, almost faster than he can process them. Some he can see, like the time Evan sunk in the pool and Cal fished him out, or the time Cal put a “d” in the word “orange,” or the time Alex called him cool. No one really calls him “cool,” other than Evan, and Evan thinks everyone is cool, so his opinion is like finding salad in your salad.

The same old bridge and the same old murky water starts to bore him, so he takes off again. Everything’s moving fast, so he has to move faster, and it still doesn’t feel fast enough. His lungs are screaming, and everything else is screaming, and his body feels like a horror movie. But it’s cool. Running’s a good way to let loose all those Thoughts. To lock his mind away somewhere his body can’t touch. Calvin 1 and Calvin 2—Calvin 1 thinks, Calvin 2 does.

 _It’s late_ , Calvin 1 says. _You should head home_.

The Sun has now officially set and all the streetlights have lit up, throwing his shadow to the ground: a long, stretched figure, someone much bigger than himself. Hot. Do you think it’s arrogant to say you’d lose to your own shadow in a fight?

He likes that, when he’s standing at the pivot of a streetlight, he’s always assigned about three or four shadows to trail him around, and, of the bunch, there’s always an alpha—the strongest shadow, leading the pack. And that’s what he wants to be: the umbra. It’s a good metaphor, probably. But maybe he’s just digging something stupid out of nothing again.

Cal’s house pops up in the distance. Today, lights in the living room are on, which means that Mum’s awake. She usually goes to bed at either five in the afternoon or five in the morning, so it looks like gonna be another late night—or would it be early morning?—for her.

This fine evening, Mum is seated in one of the laundry chairs on the veranda. Cal dips a hand through the screen door and says, “Nice weather? What can ya see from there? Oh—can you see the moon? Maybe shift a bit to the right. Full moon was yesterday, but new moon’s nothing to underestimate, either. Take my word. My guarantee.” His whole body emerges from beyond the kitchen’s confines, and he continues rambling on and on about the sky, and although his mum isn’t saying anything, he knows she’s listening because she’s nodding every now and then. And that’s good enough. Sometimes she doesn’t even hear him, which probably isn’t her fault, but it still stings a bit nevertheless.

But, today? Things are looking up, and so is his mum, and so is he—they’re all looking up at the sky. Stargazing is cool, it’s one of his hobbies—it’s something that doesn’t really require talking, but Cal’s still talking, anyway.

“Hey, just a bit further over there—yeah, you’re close, right there—if you look closely, you’ll see a body with two crab claws coming out. Cancer, the crab.” He’s just rattling off constellations. It’s a topic that never gets old, because there’s just so much to talk about. He hasn’t even scratched the surface. “Do you think Cancer’s a cool or a cruel name? A disease that kills people . . . or a space crab . . . Hmm . . .”

The sky is absolutely littered with stars. Cal’s pulled up another chair, sitting close but not too close, just in case she doesn’t want the contact. He loves stargazing, but especially with his mum—if you wanted a reason, it’d probably just be, “Well, she’s family, you know?” Family shit.

When he was younger, his mum used to bring him out to the lawn when he couldn’t sleep and she’d talk about constellations, too. She told him about Gemini, and the Twins, Castor and Pollux. She told him about the story of Hercules. She told him about the Pleaides. And he’d once asked her, “Do you think a hug from Saturn’s rings would feel nice?” and she’d said, “Definitely,” and then tackled him into a tight, almost bromantic hug.

Or sometimes they just stargazed even if Cal wasn’t under Insomnia’s Curse. And, contact back then? That was completely A-OK. He’d lay in her lap, she’d tousle his hair—good times, those. He was a young, impressionable, snot-nosed kid, and he’d made this big deal out of being an astronaut, and his dad had said, “Alright, alright, son, sit down,” but his mum had asked him, “Calvin, do you know the key factor that separates a successful space mission from an unsuccessful one?”

“Hmmmmmmmmmmmm . . .” he’d said, “the heart?”

“That’s cute, Calstronaut,” she said, but she shook her head. “The most important thing, the absolute crucial thing . . . is that everyone is able to come home again, safe and sound. Do you think space is your friend or your enemy?”

Does he think space is his friend or his enemy? That’s a loaded question, Mum. Well, can space hold a grudge? Does space judge you? He’s told the stars some pretty shameful things, if he’s honest. Maybe it thinks he’s human scum, and if he’s ever flung into space, it’ll rip him to bits.

Or maybe it pities him. Maybe it sees all the people around him, all the other friends he could talk to, and thinks, “Hey, brat, why’re you always coming to me?” And, honestly? It’s not like he knows why.

Back then, he didn’t really say anything. He just said, “Well, I dunno, maybe I’ll take it out for coffee first,” and his mum laughed and laughed and his dad said, “Oh, haha, but remember! You can’t drink coffee!” because, you know: dads.

But, anyway, that was a few years ago, and it doesn’t really matter anymore. It’s not she’ll remember after all this time. It’s not like he can suddenly just say, “Mum, remember that question you asked me, five years ago? I’ve finally found the answer, and, boy, will you be excited to hear this!”

Instead he says, “I’ll go make dinner—and hold onto your seat, ’cause I’ll be cookin’ up a storm!” in this light, jokey tone, and she nods but doesn’t respond, which is good enough for him.


End file.
